AfD: Applicants in OB stitch elections significantly behind-CDU conquers Dortmund

Heavy blow for the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia: In the stab elections around Mayor’s offices, the SPD has lost the Ruhr area metropolis of Dortmund, who has been social democratically for almost 80 years, to the CDU. In contrast, the SPD was able to hope for successes in other major cities such as Cologne and Oberhausen. In Münster it became apparent that the Greens could first represent the mayor in the university city.

In Dortmund, which is also called the heart chamber of social democracy, SPD office owner Thomas Westphal was defeated against the CDU challenger Alexander Omar Kalouti after a head-to-head race. This is the end of an SPD era that has been going on in Dortmund for eight decades. According to the temporary result, Kalouti won 52.92 percent of the vote in the third largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Westphal came to 47.08 percent of the vote.

In contrast, the SPD in Cologne’s million city could hope for a win. There, the SPD politician and former sports official Torsten Burmester led against state parliament vice president Berivan Aymaz from the Greens. The incumbent mayor Henriette Reker (independent) had no longer started after two term.

A victory of the CDU emerged in the NRW state capital of Düsseldorf. The incumbent mayor Stephan Keller (CDU) was in front of the Green politician Clara Gerlach.

The AfD lost to the SPD candidates in stab elections in Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen. In Hagen, too, everything indicated a victory of the CDU candidate there against the AfD rival.

In the steel city of Duisburg, the long-time SPD office holder Sören Link came to 78.6 percent of the vote, for his AfD competitor Carsten Groß, 21.4 percent voted. The 49-year-old link has been the mayor of Duisburg for 13 years and was able to score with his course against social fraud with many citizens.

In Gelsenkirchen, social politician Andrea Henze (SPD) becomes the new mayor. In the runoff election, the 49-year-old was 66.9 percent of the vote against Norbert Emmerich from the AfD, which came to 33.1 percent. Gelsenkirchen suffers from severe structural problems and records the highest unemployment rate nationwide.

Also in the city of Lüdenscheid, which was plagued by the bridge disaster on the A45, SPD Mayor Sebastian Wagemeyer remains in office. The non -partisan challenge Melita Alzorba supported by CDU came to 49.6 percent.

Two weeks after the local election elections, almost 150 trial elections were pending in the most populous state. Mayor were still elected in 21 of the 23 independent cities, in 15 out of 31 circles there were duels for district offices. In addition, mayors were determined in more than 100 cities belonging to the district in the second ballot.

The stitch elections were necessary because in the first round none of the applicants had reached more than 50 percent right away. In the second round, the simple majority is enough.

In the most populous federal state, the CDU in the first ballot on September 14, despite slight declines with 33.3 percent of the votes, clearly remained the strongest force. According to the temporary state result, the AfD almost tripled its share of votes in councils and district days to 14.5 percent. In the nationwide election, she landed in third place behind the SPD, which came to 22.1 percent.

The Greens had to accept considerable losses and won 13.5 percent after 20 percent in the 2020 local elections. The left came to 5.6 percent and the FDP to 3.7 percent.