After local elections: AfD cannot fill 120 seats

Big mouth and then nothing behind it? It happens again and again that parties do not have enough candidates on their electoral list to really fill all the seats after the election. After the local elections in Saxony-Anhalt, however, 162 seats remain vacant. The state election director pointed this out when asked.

There are 17 vacant seats for individual candidates and voting groups, 6 for the CDU, and 1 seat each for the SPD and FDP. The AfD, on the other hand, has a really big gap: it cannot fill 120 seats. This has a direct impact on the voting ratio in the respective local parliaments.

Already in the 2019 local elections, the AfD was unable to fill many seats

The AfD had gained a significant amount of votes in the local elections at the beginning of June and received the most votes nationwide with 28.1 percent. This put it just ahead of the CDU with 26.8 percent. The AfD had already failed to fill seats in some places, including Bernburg, in the 2019 local elections.

The AFD not only has the problem that it was often unable to field enough candidates. In some cases, individual candidates have also not accepted their mandates, reports a spokeswoman for the state election director. With around 4,400 seats up for grabs in city and municipal councils and in the collective municipalities across the country, the 162 seats correspond to a share of around 3.7 percent.

According to the state election officer, all seats in the rural districts and independent cities of Magdeburg, Halle and Dessau-Roßlau were filled. According to local government law, the seats will remain vacant until the end of the election period.