Far-right AfD party may win first German city mayor post in run-off vote

Voters in the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder have chosen an independent candidate over the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) contender, blocking what would have been the largest opposition party in parliament’s first major urban win in a German mayoral election.

Independent Axel Strasser won on Sunday with 69.8 percent of the vote against AfD candidate Wilko Moller, who received 30.2 percent, according to preliminary results. Voter turnout was 49.4 percent.

In the first round of voting on September 21, Strasser received 32.4 percent of the vote and Moller 30.2 percent, while candidates from the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and the centre-left Social Democratic Party were eliminated.

The election came three days after the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, stripped two AfD lawmakers of their parliamentary immunity, with one accused of defamation and the other of making a Nazi salute, which is illegal in Germany.

Ahead of the election, political scientist Jan Philipp Thomeczek, of the University of Potsdam, told the dpa news agency that a victory for Moller would have sent “a very strong signal” that the anti-immigrant and eurosceptic AfD can succeed in urban areas.

Frankfurt an der Oder is a city in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, located directly on the border with Poland. It is distinct from Frankfurt am Main, the much larger financial hub in western Germany.

It is the fourth-largest city in Brandenburg, with some 57,000 residents. The city’s challenges include border checks to and from Poland, immigration and the economy.

The German Association of Towns and Municipalities said there is currently no AfD-affiliated mayor of a city of significant size anywhere in the country.

Tim Lochner became mayor of the town of Pirna, near the Czech border, after being nominated for election in 2023 by the AfD, but he is technically an independent. AfD politician Robert Sesselmann is the district administrator in the Sonneberg district in Thuringia, and there are also AfD mayors in small towns in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The Brandenburg domestic intelligence service in May classified the AfD’s state branch as “confirmed far-right extremist”, a label the party rejects as a politically driven attempt to marginalise it.

A 1,100-page report compiled by the agency – that will not be made public – concluded that the AfD is a racist and anti-Muslim organisation.

The designation makes the party subject to surveillance and has revived discussion over a potential ban for the AfD, which has launched a legal challenge against the intelligence service.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio sharply criticised the classification when it was announced, branding it as “tyranny in disguise”, and urged German authorities to reverse the move.

In response, Germany hit back at US President Donald Trump’s administration, suggesting officials in Washington should study history.

“We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped,” said Germany’s Federal Foreign Office in a statement.

The Kremlin also criticised the action against the AfD, which regularly repeats Russian narratives regarding the war in Ukraine, and what it called a broader trend of “restrictive measures” against political movements in Europe.