The right-wing Eurosceptic party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has won its first district mayoral seat in Germany as the party’s support continues to rise in the country.
In the Sonneberg district in Thuringia, in the centre of the country, Robert Sesselmann of the AfD won a run-off election at the end of last month beating Jurgen Kopper of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Germany’s centre-right party.
This election was the first time that the AfD secured the leadership of a district and the first time that it had won an executive post in Germany.
The win also comes as the AfD is surging in the polls. According to polls it is now the most popular party in some states and the second-most popular across Germany.
In the 2021 general election it won 10% of the vote and 83 seats, making it the fifth biggest party in the Bundestag. However, recent polls have the party having the support of about 20% of Germans, second only to the CDU, with about a quarter of Germans supporting that party.
The Social Democrats and the Greens are the other two parties which are polling at above 10%.
The rise of the AfD has raised concerns for some Germans, with some characterising the party as being ‘neo-Nazi’.
In 2022 the party’s leader, Jorg Meuthen, resigned, saying that the party had drifted too far to the right.
In April this year the party’s youth wing was classified by the German intelligence services as an ‘extremist’ organisation, which allows it to be placed under higher levels of surveillance.
[Image: https://www.afd-thueringen.de/kv-sued-ost-thueringen/2021/08/robert-sesselmann-schluss-mit-postenschacherei-und-kommunalem-aemterfilz/]