2023-12-18 10:27:10
For the first time, the AfD has a mayor in Germany. For the party, the success means tailwind for the elections in East Germany next year.
AfD candidate Tim Lochner is the new mayor of Pirna in Saxony.
Matthias Rietschel / Getty
After the first victory of an AfD candidate in a German mayoral election on Sunday in Pirna, Saxony, the reactions were predictably divided. The AfD leader Alice Weidel spoke on Platform X of a “historic result”. The Saxon AfD leader Jörg Urban is encouraged: “We want to win here in Saxony, we want to win clearly, we want to get close to 40 percent. “This is a great opportunity for our party for next year,” said Urban to the German Press Agency, with a view to the state elections in Saxony next year.
The AfD’s political opponents particularly criticized the fact that the AfD’s competitors had not been able to agree on a common candidate for the second round of voting. Free voters and the CDU had each sent their own candidates into the race once morest the AfD. The federal government’s queer commissioner, Sven Lehmann, explained that Pirna would be a pointer for the 2024 election year. If you want to stop the shift to the right, you have to put vanity aside, said the Green politician.
The CDU defended the decision of its candidate Kathrin Dollinger-Knuth to run in the second round despite coming third in the first round. This needs to be respected, said Saxony’s Christian Democratic Interior Minister Armin Schuster. At the same time, he called for respecting the will of the voters.
The head of the Free Voters in Saxony, Thomas Weidinger, however, sharply criticized the CDU. “It was clear that a third candidate in the second round of voting would play into the hands of the AfD,” said Weidinger on Monday.
AfD candidate Tim Lochner won the second round of voting in Pirna on Sunday with 38.5 percent of the vote, as the city announced in the evening. The 53-year-old is independent, but ran for the AfD.
Lochner’s opponent Kathrin Dollinger-Knuth (CDU) received 31.4 percent of the vote and the independent Ralf Thiele, who ran for the Free Voters, received 30.1 percent. Lochner and Thiele were also former CDU members. The city administration reported voter turnout at 53.8 percent. In the first round of voting it was comparatively weak at 50.4 percent.
Lochner started the race as favorite following the first round on November 26th. Although he missed the required absolute majority with just under 33 percent, he was well ahead of his second-place competitor from the Free Voters with 23.2 percent of the vote. In the second round of voting, a simple majority was now sufficient.
The fact that the other parties were unable to agree on a common candidate for the second round of voting in the city of 40,000 inhabitants and did not make a common election recommendation may have contributed significantly to Lochner’s success. This is why AfD candidates have repeatedly failed in mayoral elections.
The increase in support for the AfD candidate in the second round of voting is not surprising. The party is leading the polls in Saxony. The Pirna region near the border with the Czech Republic is a stronghold of the AfD. The voters were obviously not impressed by the recent classification of the Saxon AfD regional association as definitely extremist. The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution came to this conclusion at the beginning of December following several years of examination.
AfD is heading into the state elections stronger
The independent election winner Lochner belonged to the CDU until 2016. In the Pirna city council, he also temporarily worked with the Blaue Wende party, founded by ex-AfD leader Frauke Petry, before a break occurred. The 53-year-old carpenter, who is currently deputy leader of the AfD faction in the city council, had already run for mayor in 2017. At that time, with 33 percent of the vote, he achieved a similar result to the first round of voting in November.
For the Saxon AfD, the success means tailwind for the state elections next year. In 2024, new state parliaments will also be elected in Thuringia and Brandenburg. In all eastern German federal states, elections are also held at the local level. The district elections in the Saale-Orla district in Thuringia will kick off in mid-January.
The AfD had in the state In June of this year, we were able to conquer a district office for the first time in the Sonneberg district. A little later, she appointed a full-time mayor for the first time in Raguhn-Jessnitz (Saxony-Anhalt).
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