Germany: Far-right AfD wins first city mayoral election
December 17, 2023
A candidate from Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won a city mayoral election for the first time on Sunday.
Tim Lochner was elected after winning the second round of voting in Pirna, a town in the eastern state of Saxony where the AfD has been notably strong.
Initial results showed that Lochner had won 38.5% of the vote, the city stated on its website.
Three-way fight
The far-right candidate beat out Kathrin Dollinger-Knuth (CDU), who came second with 31.4% of the vote, and Ralf Thiele, from the small Free Voters party, who got 30.1%.
Lochner, 53, is an independent but decided to stand under the far-right AfD banner for the vote.
In the first round Lochner secured a third of the vote, but was able to increase his share in the second round. The local Greens and Social Democrats dropped out after the first round and threw their support behind the CDU's Dollinger-Knuth.
Situated 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) southeast of Dresden on the edge of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, Pirna has around 40,000 inhabitants. The town is known above all for its almost perfectly preserved old town.
Extremist organization
Sunday's result comes just days after the eastern state of Saxony's domestic intelligence agency deemed the AfD as a right-wing extremist party.
Pirna marks the first time the AfD has won a mayorship in a town. In August, Hannes Loth was elected as the first mayor of a municipality — Raguhn-Jeßnitz in the state of Saxony-Anhalt — but this was a region with just 9,000 inhabitants.
In June, the party won its first district council election, with candidate Robert Sesselmann in the Sonneberg district in Thuringia.
The far-right party has been on the rise in Germany with surveys showing around one in five voters saying they would vote AfD, making it the second most popular party after the CDU.
In the eastern German states, the share of voters willing to vote AfD stands at over 30% — ahead of all other parties — with three of those states scheduled to hold elections next year: Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg.
Earlier this month, Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany's main opposition Christian Democrats (CDU), rowed back from comments suggesting his party was open to working with the AfD at the municipal level.
jsi/ab (AFP, dpa, epd)
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