Far-Right AfD Party Scores District Victory in First for Germany
(Bloomberg) -- German voters elected a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany as district administrator for the first time, handing the party a victory in an eastern stronghold as its national support surges.
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The party’s candidate, Robert Sesselmann, took about 53% in a two-man runoff Sunday in the Sonneberg district of Thuringia state, compared with about 47% for the Christian Democratic Union’s Robert Koepper. All other parties had endorsed Koepper in a bid to avert a victory for Alternative for Germany, known as AfD.
Sesselmann will take charge of day-to-day administrative duties in a district of about 50,000 people near the border with Bavaria. Germany has about 300 districts, which are roughly equivalent to counties.
Support for the anti-establishment AfD has risen along with public discontent over inflation, record immigration and costly climate-protection measures. Traditionally strong in Germany’s formerly communist east, it has been gaining in national polls in recent months.
Its support rose to a record 19% in an Infratest Dimap poll published Friday, lifting it ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats into second place for the first time.
Thuringian Interior Minister Georg Maier, a Social Democrat, called the Sonneberg result an “alert for all democratic forces,” the DPA newswire reported.
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