AfD, NPD & Co: Right-wing and right-wing extremist parties are represented in the local elections in Lower Saxony.
We provide information on how your candidates perform in the direct elections.
A result of the local election of Lower Saxony * 2021 is clear relatively early on the evening of the election: Eschede, the municipality in which the right-wing extremist NPD, which was founded in Lower Saxony, wants to set up a party center, is giving its candidate for mayor the cold shoulder.
And even in the Hanover region, where an AfD man applied for the regional presidency, after counting most of the districts, it looks like a crushing defeat for the right-wing party applicant.
How strongly are right-wing and right-wing extremist parties and groups represented on the ballot papers in Lower Saxony's local elections?
The anti-fascist magazine “Der Rechts Rand” from Hanover looked at the candidates from AfD, NDP, Dierechte and “dieBasis” - and discovered interesting details.
The AfD in the local elections in Lower Saxony
In 2016, the AfD ran for the first time in Lower Saxony's local elections. Applicants from the party, which at the time was led by the federal chairwoman Frauke Petry, had 449 municipal mandates. The comparison with 2021 shows the high fluctuation at the AfD, the magazine calculates: Of the 533 people at the time who applied for mandates in a total of 174 bodies for the AfD, only 199 would run again in the current local elections in Lower Saxony. In addition, around 60 seats were vacant at the end of the legislature - due to resignations, departure or death.
The “violent internal party disputes” in the AfD state association of Lower Saxony also emphasizes the state constitutional protection report and sees them as “an expression of a profound disagreement over fundamental positions”. The former state chairman had justified her resignation from the party with the "dominance of the right-wing extremist wing"; According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the majority of the newly elected state executive consists of "supporters of the formally dissolved 'wing'". In the state parliament, the AfD had also lost its parliamentary group status after several withdrawals.
In the local election in Lower Saxony in 2021, the AfD is represented on numerous ballot papers, regardless of the inner-party tears.
Members stood for almost all district assemblies (exception: Wesermarsch district), for all independent cities except Emden and Göttingen *, for 30 joint municipal councils and 148 municipal councils.
Four AfD members wanted to become mayors (Braunschweig *, Delmenhorst, Salzgitter *, Wolfsburg *), in the districts of Gifhorn, Helmstedt and Vechta, the party sent applicants for the district posts in the race.
In the Hanover region, the AfD applied for the office of regional president, who is elected every seven years.
This is how the AfD candidates cut in the direct elections in Lower Saxony
Regional presidency:
AfD applicant Siegfried Reichert is, after counting 1200 of the 1308 electoral districts, 5.7 percent of the vote.
Everything speaks in favor of Steffen Krach (SPD) and Christine Karasch (CDU) going into the runoff here on September 26, 2021.
OB-elections
: On the Counts is
Wolfsburg
where AFD OB-candidate Thomas Schlick to be content at the end of 5.3 percent must.
Jaroslaw Poljak is
5.7 percent of the votes
in
Delmenhorst
after counting 59 of the 67 districts. Mirco Hanker in
Braunschweig is
5.8 percent after counting 119 of the 256 districts.
In
Salzgitter
, AfD man Thomas-Peter Disselhoff achieved 8.86 percent.
District
elections
:
The district election in
the Vechta district
, where AfD politician Aloys Thye-Moormann was Tobias Gerdesmeyer's (CDU )’s only competitor,
is counted
.
The vote of the voters here is clear: According to the preliminary result, Gerdesmeyer received 92.64 percent of the vote, Thye-Moormann 7.36 percent.
In
the Helmstedt district,
also fully counted, AfD district administrator candidate Jozef Rackiky achieved 9.56 percent of the vote.
In
the Gifhorn district
, Robert Preuss is currently around 8.5 percent (244 of 253 counted).
The NPD in the local elections in Lower Saxony
The NPD, founded in Hanover in 1964, only appears sporadically on the ballot papers for Lower Saxony's local elections in 2021.
The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution certifies that the right-wing extremist small party has been “marginalized” in the 2020 report on the Protection of the Constitution. At the end of 2020, it still had 230 members in Lower Saxony.
Nonetheless, the authority assures that the NPD's "anchor point" in the Celle district, the seamz farm in Eschede, will be kept in mind: the NPD regional association bought the farm, which has been a meeting place for right-wing extremist groups since the 1990s, in 2019.
This is how the NPD performs in direct elections
So it is no coincidence that
Eschede is
one of the four places in Lower Saxony where NDP members applied for mandates and posts in local elections - albeit unsuccessfully.
The NPD state chairman Manfred Dammann, who wanted to become mayor in Eschede, has to be satisfied with 2.5 percent and thus the last place in the five-person field of applicants.
In addition, two NPD members competed in committee elections: Carsten Dicty for the city council in Goslar and Manfred Börm for the council of the Bardowick municipality and in the municipality of Handorf in the Lüneburg district.
"The rights" in the local elections in Lower Saxony
The protection of the constitution in Lower Saxony noticed the party “The Right” mainly because it was the source of the “most high-profile right-wing extremist activities in Lower Saxony” in the year under review. This is primarily due to the newly founded district association Einbeck / Northeim by members of the shortly before dissolved "Kameradschaft Einbeck". The number of members in the regional association increased from 30 to 40 as a result. The focus of the activities were the district associations Braunschweig / Hildesheim and Einbeck / Northeim, where the two district chairmen Johannes Welge from Hildesheim and Tobias Haupt from Northeim were particularly active.
In the local elections, according to the evaluation of the magazine “Derrechte Rand”, the rights will only run with a single candidate: Martin Kiese is applying for the district council of Braunschweig.
"DieBasis" in the local elections in Lower Saxony
Emerging from the ranks of “lateral thinkers” and conspiracy believers who are open to the right, the “dieBasis” party will take part in the local elections in Lower Saxony for the first time in 2021.
233 members apply for mandates in 140 Lower Saxony committees, some of them stand for several committees.
However, some of the names were already on the ballot papers in 2016 - on the lists of other parties, from the NPD to CDU, FDP and pirates to the left.
“The Right Edge” also took a look at the professions of the candidates - and found that “dieBasis” includes people with activities in the field of physiotherapy as well as in psychological and psychiatric professions.
You can find all the results of the local elections in Lower Saxony in our live ticker for voting.
