German Far-right Scores First City Mayor Post

Fahad Shabbir (@FahadShabbir) Published December 18, 2023 | 10:00 AM

Berlin, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Dec, 2023) Germany's far-right AfD won its first city mayor position on Sunday, preliminary results showed, in a further boost to the anti-immigration party as it surges in opinion polls.

Tim Lochner, a carpenter, came out on top in a closely watched runoff vote in Pirna, a municipality with a population of around 40,000 in the former East German state of Saxony.

Lochner took 38.5 percent of the vote in a battle against two other candidates, initial results showed.

He is a member of the AfD group in the city council, though he is not a member of the party.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel hailed the victory as a "historic result" on X, formerly Twitter.

The win is the latest in a string of successes for the AfD, created in 2013 as an anti-euro outfit before seizing on anger over mass migration to Germany.

The party secured its first district administrator position in June in another former East German state, Thuringia, and its first town mayor in July in neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt.

Other AfD candidates have come close to securing city mayor posts in recent months, but have not succeeded.

At the national level, recent opinion polls have put the party on 22 percent, behind only the main opposition conservative party.

The AfD's support is especially strong in former East Germany, where it is polling at around 32 percent, according to a recent survey commissioned by Der Spiegel magazine.