SPD politician Lauterbach wins the direct mandate in the constituency of Leverkusen - Cologne IV by a long way ahead of the CDU candidate. Now he has great ambitions.
Cologne - The health expert of the SPD, Karl Lauterbach, won a direct mandate in the federal election for the fifth time in a row.
In his constituency of Leverkusen - Cologne IV, he received 45.6 percent of the first votes cast.
He sees his election victory as “a vote for our corona policy”.
Lauterbach wrote on Twitter that the voters had honored this work.
Lauterbach became known nationwide as a health expert during the pandemic.
Even before the election, he had expressed interest in the post of Federal Minister of Health.
Whether he will receive this will only become clear in the course of the coalition negotiations.
Significantly more than twice as many votes as the second-placed candidate of the CDU, Serap Güler.
This is the 5th time that I have been directly elected.
The election is also a vote for our corona policy.
I thank the many voters who have honored this work.
pic.twitter.com/nrRWxz2Niv
- Karl Lauterbach (@Karl_Lauterbach) September 26, 2021
Direct mandate: Lauterbach received more than twice as many votes as the CDU candidate
The CDU candidate of the same constituency, NRW integration secretary Serap Güler, received only 20.4 percent of the first votes cast.
She is considered a confidante of Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet (CDU).
However, Güler is also in eighth place on the state list of the North Rhine-Westphalian CDU.
According to information from the NRW regional returning officer on Monday (September 27), she was elected to the Bundestag despite her defeat by Lauterbach.
Lauterbach also generally commented on the outcome of the 2021 federal election on his Twitter profile. He was particularly pleased that Hans-Georg Maaßen (CDU), the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, lost the fight for the direct mandate in southern Thuringia.
He was far behind the SPD candidate Frank Ullrich.
Federal election 2021: joy over the defeat of Hans-Georg Maaßen (CDU)
Lauterbach also sees the federal election as a vote on corona policy since the outbreak of the pandemic in Germany.
He commented that the AfD could not gain votes.
On the occasion, he also tweeted that Germany got through the corona crisis better than "almost all other countries".
This is shown by a recent study by the University of Oxford.
(at / dpa)