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Green top duo Julia Willie Hamburg and Christian Meyer at the election party in Hanover
Photo: FOCKE STRANGMANN / AFP
The traditional red and black map of Lower Saxony gets green sprinklers.
In Göttingen and Lüneburg, the Greens won a direct mandate for the first time in a state election - and thus ended decades of SPD leadership in the constituency.
According to the count, the Greens candidate Marie Kollenrott received 35.7 percent of the first votes in the university town.
The SPD candidate Karola Margraf received 27.9 percent, the CDU candidate Carina Hermann came third with 20.7 percent.
In Lüneburg, the Green Pascal Mennen won with 30.0 percent ahead of the SPD candidate Andrea Schröder-Ehlers (29.2 percent).
Kollenrott entered the state parliament in Hanover for the first time in 2021 - now she was directly elected with a strong result.
"It's going to be historical," she told the "Göttinger Tagblatt".
»I am very happy about my strong result.«
Green Party leader Ricarda Lang also congratulated Green Party candidate Julia Willie Hamburg on the direct mandate in Hanover-Mitte.
However, the counts are not yet complete.
In the projections of ARD and ZDF, the Greens were able to increase significantly overall - they improved their result from 8.7 percent in the last state election in 2017 to 14.5 percent.
The party leadership has already expressed its will to form a red-green state government alongside the SPD under Prime Minister Stephan Weil.
"Order" to form a government
“We will do everything we can to reshape Lower Saxony for the next five years as a Green and set it up for the future,” said the state head.
Party leader Lang also spoke of this "order".
According to projections by ARD and ZDF, the SPD with 52 to 55 seats and the Greens with 22 to 23 together will have an absolute majority in the state parliament.
The CDU has 44 to 46 seats, followed by the AfD with 17 to 18. Almost ten years ago, Weil had forged a red-green alliance that was based on a majority of only one vote and failed in 2017 due to a green dissenter.
Since then he has governed with the CDU.
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