MUNICH (dpa-AFX) – Many mayoral and district administrator elections in Bavaria will only be decided in the runoff elections in two weeks. Above all, the mayoral election in Munich, where incumbent Dieter Reiter (SPD) suffered significant losses in the first round after recent negative headlines – he himself spoke of a disappointing evening. The elections in Nuremberg and Augsburg also did not bring a decision. Many district administrators will also not be appointed until March 22nd. In the mayoral election in Bamberg, the former Bavarian Health Minister Melanie Huml (CSU) missed the runoff vote.
The city council, local council and district council elections must be counted by Wednesday at the latest – then a nationwide result should also be known. It is eagerly awaited whether and how much the AfD will grow.
Important results and trends from the local election evening at a glance:
Rider must be trembling
Munich: Here, incumbent Dieter Reiter has to go into the runoff election, as he did in 2014 and 2020. But: After the negative headlines of the past few days, the SPD man had to accept significant losses. Six years ago he got 47.9 percent in the first round of voting. In the evening it was 35.6 percent – after counting 1,364 of 1,376 areas. On his heels: Dominik Krause from the Greens with 29.4 percent. “I have made one or two mistakes in the last two weeks,” said Reiter in the evening in Munich. The aim now is to “regain lost trust” until the runoff election.
Reiter recently came under massive criticism because of payments for volunteer work at FC Bayern that were not approved by the city council. And then the mayor said the N-word in a city council meeting – casually while leafing through documents. The term “N-word” is now used to describe a previously used racist term for black people. Reiter apologized for both incidents.
Mayoral runoff elections also in other large cities
Nuremberg: In Bavaria’s second largest city there will be a runoff election between incumbent Marcus König from the CSU and SPD challenger Nasser Ahmed. After counting 720 of the 726 areas, King led unassailably with 46 percent of the votes ahead of Ahmed (26.5 percent). The candidates from the Greens and AfD were unable to intervene decisively in the duel.
Augsburg: In Bavaria’s third largest city, Mayor Eva Weber (CSU) has to go into the runoff election against SPD candidate Florian Freund.
Elsewhere, incumbents have to tremble: in Erlangen and Aschaffenburg, the CSU candidates won more votes than the SPD incumbents in the first attempt. In Schweinfurt, previously governed by the CSU, the SPD candidate was ahead.
Initial assessments of the parties
CSU General Secretary Martin Huber told the German Press Agency in an initial interim assessment that there were numerous runoff elections, not least because of the AfD. But we are going into the next two weeks until the runoff elections on March 22nd with full momentum and confidence, he emphasized.
Free Voters boss Hubert Aiwanger said in the BR that it looks like the number of Free Voters district administrators will at least be able to be defended.
AfD is likely to grow
The AfD is likely to increase its nationwide results – if only because this time it ran with its own lists in all independent cities and all districts. And these are exactly the election results from which the State Statistical Office will ultimately determine the nationwide local election results. Six years ago, the AfD won 4.7 percent of the vote nationwide.
But the truth is also: the party seems to have no chance in all important personal elections. There was no AfD victory anywhere in the district administrator and mayoral elections on Sunday. However, it could not be ruled out that AfD candidates could make it into runoff elections.
Waiting for the national result
The nationwide result will not be known until Wednesday. To do this, the city council elections in the independent cities and the district council elections in the rural districts must be added together. In the local elections six years ago, the CSU lost a good five percentage points and only received 34.5 percent of the vote nationwide.
For the SPD, it fell by around seven percentage points to a historically poor 13.7 percent in 2020. Six years ago, the Greens achieved their best local election result to date with 17.5 percent. The Free Voters got 11.9 percent in 2020, the AfD got 4.7 percent. Joint election proposals with other parties or groups are included in these numbers./ctt/had/dm/DP/zb
