Any coalition that emerges is likely to be highly unstable.
In Saxony, the conservatives won 42 seats, just ahead of the AfD with 41, while Sahra Wagenknecht’s party is in third with 15 seats.
In Thuringia, Mr Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) won just six seats, with none for his coalition partners the Greens and the liberal FDP. The SPD also fared badly in Saxony, where it came fifth.
The elections underlined the unpopularity of Germany’s ruling “traffic-light” coalition, so named because of the red, yellow and green of the party colours.
Each of the three governing parties did badly, meaning they will fight their corner in the national coalition even more assertively.
Already leading figures within each party are saying they need to stand up for their own values. This will likely lead to more rifts within the national government. Ministers are saying they won’t break up the coalition, and bring down the government – but the fact they are saying this at all is a sign of how difficult things are within the coalition.
Ms Weidel said people “voted out” the coalition and called on Mr Scholz and his partners to “pack their bags and vacate their chairs, because the voters want a different government, they want a different politics”.
The biggest issue for AfD voters on Sunday was immigration, and in particular the issue of refugees and asylum.
Even though the AfD is still blocked out of governmental power both in the regions and nationally, the party does have an impact on mainstream politics.
When the AfD entered the Bundestag in Berlin in 2017 critics say their fierce anti-migrant rhetoric coarsened the debate.
Some believe the discourse in politics and the media has become more aggressive, and CDU leader Friedrich Merz is accused of aping AfD rhetoric.
Either way, to win back AfD voters mainstream parties are talking tougher on issues like migration and pushing through measures to make it easier to deport asylum seekers whose application has been rejected.
The federal chairwoman of the umbrella organization of Turkish communities in Berlin, Aslihan Yesilkaya-Yurtbay, said that the results of the elections were “shocking and frightening”. She added that many younger people of her generation are already planning to leave Germany.
“The future in this country for citizens with a migration background is being called into question,” she said.
The AfD also wants to stop weapons supplies to Ukraine, as does Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW.
Some five million Germans in the east were eligible to vote on Sunday.
A third eastern state, Brandenburg, is due to vote in three weeks’ time and although the AfD is ahead in the opinion polls, the Social Democrats and conservatives are only a few points behind.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)