The rightwing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won its first mayoral office in the European country on Sunday (02 July). State MP Hannes Loth will be the new mayor of the small town of RaguhnJeßnitz in SaxonyAnhalt in the east of the country, a region that is the acronym’s main electoral stronghold.
Loth, 42 years old, received 51.13% of the votes in the second ballot in the city of almost 9,000 inhabitants. His rival, independent Nils Naumann, 31, gained 48.87% according to preliminary results. According to official figures, voter turnout in the city was 61.51%.
Since 2013, the founding year of the party, member of the AfD, agricultural scientist Loth has been a member of the state parliament in SaxonyAnhalt since 2016. In smaller towns, AfD members have already served as honorary or parttime mayors, but this is the first time the member is elected to take on a fulltime position.
In 2019, the AfD appeared on course to win the mayoral post in Görlitz, Saxony, but a “broad front” uniting conservatives and leftwing parties eventually stopped the acronymbearing candidate in the second round, in an episode the … received a lot of attention in the press.
On Sunday, Loth thanked his supporters for the “wonderful result”. “I will be mayor of everyone in RaguhnJeßnitz,” he wrote on his social media.
It is the second AfD election victory within a week. Last Sunday, Robert Stuhlmann became the first party member to win a district administrator’s post in Sonneberg, Thuringia, also in eastern Germany, defeating a conservative candidate from the traditional Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Hannes Loth election advertising in RaguhnJeßnitzPhoto: Jan Woitas/dpa/picture Alliance
AfD advance in the east
Although the district of Sonneberg has only 56,000 inhabitants, last Sunday’s victory in Germany was seen as a sign of the advance of the AfD in parts of the German electorate. A poll published on Friday found the party commanded up to 19% of voter preferences, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), which has 18% representation. In the survey, the AfD was only behind the CDU, which added 28%. Germany has three state elections next year all in the east of the country and the AfD is already making a breakthrough with voters there.
In Thuringia, the party seems to be edging out Die Linke an acronym formed in part by remnants of the former East German Communist Party in the electoral favour. In a poll published in April, the AfD recorded 28% of local supporters, versus 22% of the left, which won the last election in 2019.
According to a survey published at the end of May, the AfD is also in the lead in Saxony with 32%, ahead of the conservative CDU with 31%. In Brandenburg, the party was technically on par with the CDU with 23% in a poll in April and ahead of the SPD, which achieved 22%. In the 2019 election, the SPD came first with 26.2%.
Any electoral victories for the AfD in these three eastern states could lead to government difficulties, as other traditional parties would be forced to form complex coalitions to stop the influence of the farright in state parliaments.
This Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz commented on the AfD’s election wins in an ARD interview. He argued that the recipe for countering the advance of the far right was to offer “a perspective for the future” and urged the traditional parties to maintain a “cordon sanitaire” and cooperate with the AfD acronym in the to avoid legislation.
Founded in 2013, initially as a liberalleaning Eurosceptic shortcut, the AfD quickly shifted to the right, particularly after the 20152016 refugee crisis. With radically antiimmigrant positions and members who attract attention in the press for inflammatory or racist speeches, the party is regularly accused of harboring neoNazis, and one of its wings has already been placed under police surveillance on suspicion of extremism.
The AfD is particularly strong in the eastern federal states that formed the former communist GDR. In the last year, party politicians who have their strongholds in this area have taken proRussian, antisanctions and antiWestern positions on military aid to Ukraine. The party also has ties to the world’s extreme right. In 2021, one of her deputies, Beatrix von Storch, was received by then Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
jps (dpa, ots, dw)