The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party had yet another victory on Sunday, December 17, after its candidate Tim Lochner won the election for mayor of Pirna, a town of 40,000 residents in the eastern German state of Saxony, between Dresden and the Czech border. Three weeks after the first round, in which he came out on top, the 53-year-old carpenter, also a candidate in 2017, won the second round with 38.5% of the vote over Kathrin Dollinger-Knuth (31.4%) of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Ralf Thiele (30%) of the ultraconservative Free Voters party. A total of 53.8% of registered voters took part, 3.4% more than in the first round.
2023 was a banner year for Germany's far right. On June 25, the AfD conquered a Landkreis (district) for the first time, in Sonneberg in the German state of Thuringia. On July 2, the far-right won its first mayoralty in Raguhn-Jeßnitz, a town of 9,000 residents located between Berlin and Leipzig in Saxony-Anhalt. On October 8, the AfD made a spectacular breakthrough in regional elections in Hesse (18.4%, + 5.3 points compared to 2018) and Bavaria (14.6%, + 4.4): The party had never before achieved such scores in the states of former West Germany.
With its victory in Pirna, the AfD has taken control of a medium-sized town for the first time. The movement's president, Alice Weidel, hailed a "historic" result on Sunday evening. Until now, AfD candidates had failed to win in similar-sized municipalities. This was the case on September 24 in Nordhausen, Thuringia, and on October 8 in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Saxony-Anhalt, where the outgoing mayors eventually won re-election in the second round despite being defeated by the far right in the first.
The outcome was different in Pirna. Voting rules no doubt played a role. In Saxony, several candidates can compete in the second round of a municipal election, and it is enough to be in the lead – without necessarily having an absolute majority – to win. This is what happened on Sunday. Pitted against two representatives of the conservative right who had preferred to remain in the race rather than withdraw to block the AfD's path, the far-right candidate benefited from split votes in a town where the left carries almost no weight. The joint candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens only obtained 9.9% of the vote in the first round.
Although arithmetically probable, Lochner's victory in Pirna might have seemed politically avoidable. Locher is a former CDU member who recently expressed concern about the risks of a "great replacement" in nurseries due to the growing number of foreigners in his town. On December 8, the AfD party in Saxony was categorized as "unmistakably far-right" by the regional Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
You have 55% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.