Well, the election repetition in Berlin was this year, too, so the Thuringia local elections were the second event. The normal route would have been to couple them with the European elections, and I don't know why it wasn't done. At least the CDU suggested that, last year.
Brief summary, the elections were generally good for the AfD and CDU, bad for the Left and Greens, for the SPD it depends a bit on the race, but on average they lost ground. The FDP has not played an important role in these for years. In many more rural parts all kinds of localist voter groups play an important role. Most of them are centrist to conservative, but they should not be lumped together automatically with the "Free Voters" party. BSW was successful, if they stood candidates.
One important factor is, that there are not that many big cities. Of course, there is the capital of Erfurt with roughly above 200.000 people, Jena as an important center of industry, science and prosperity with roughly above 100.000 people, the "rust beltish" declining city of Gera with today roughly 90.000 people and Weimar, the center of the "German Classic" cultural movement around 1800 and for that reason city of culture and affluent pensioners" with about 65.000 people. But there are many medium-sized and small towns that often have a quite significant history and former importance like the "imperial cities" of Mühlhausen and Nordhausen or the capitals and residences of the former dukes, princes and counts like Altenburg, Gotha or Meiningen.
Many areas were strongly affected by the industrialisation in the 19th and early 20th century and as strongly affected by stagnation and decay during the GDR times and the deindustrialisation, population loss and connected demographic changes of the late 20th century until today.
So concerning the emerging "cosmopolitan-nationalist" cleavage or political polarization in Germany that, especially in the East seems erode older voting patterns quite fast, most of Thuringia - with the exceptions of Erfurt, Jena and Weimar, seems to lean strongly towards the latter and that the Left party still held some of there ground depended on Wagenknecht's party not competing and prime minister Bodo Ramelow's popularity.
I will concentrate on the elections for the districts (
Landkreise) and district-free cities (
Kreisfreie Städte as the elections on town and muncipality level are often dominated by localist groups where many parties don't stand - and Thuringia still has many of those 300-people muncipalities.
Heads of the executive (Landräte and Oberbürgermeister)There are 5 district-free cities that all held mayoral elections, yesterday. There are 17 districts or counties of which 13 held
Landrat elections.
Only three of these contests won't go into the runoff as a candidate reached more than 50 percent of the vote.
In
Weimar incumbent Peter Kleine, supported by the CDU and the localist "weimarwerk" group was reelected with 72.7 percent against Left, SPD and Greens. AfD did not compete.
In the city of
Suhl CDU incumbent André Knapp beat the Left party challenger Steffen Hartwig 82.1 to 17.9
In the
Schmalkalden-Meiningen district there were only two candidates, SPD's incumbent Peggy Greiser beat the CDU challenger Ralph Libaug 52.5.-47.5
In the city of Erfurt long-term SPD incumbent Andreas Bausewein will face CDU challenger Andreas Horn. Bausewein trailed Horn 22.7 to 28.3. AfD got third with 19.3 percent. Theoretically, there is some kind of a very slim centre-left majority.
In the city of
Gera the run-off will be between the CDU candidate Kurt Dannenberg and the independent incumbent Julian Vonarb, a former CDU member who had left the party before the election of 2018 because of local reasons. They are basically tied with 33.2 to 32.3 per cent. AfD clearly missed the runoff with 24.4 per cent. As this was a Vornab-AfD runoff in 2018 I would expect the CDU candidate to win.
In the city of
Jena we will get something special, a FDP-Green runoff. Incumbent Thomas Nitzsche at 25.3 percent will face Green's Kathleen Lützkendorf at 15.4 percent. This result clearly screams for STV:
FDP 25.3 %
Greens 15.4 %
Left 13.4 %
AfD 12.7 %
CDU 12.1 %
SPD 11,7 %
Bürger für Jena (localist, no connection to the far-right "Bürger für Thüringen"), 7,5 %
one Independent, 1,9 %
In many districts the CDU-AfD runoff is the new norm
Eichsfeld: CDU (46.3) vs. AfD (20.
. Several probably localist and a joint FDP-SPD candidate missed out.
Wartburgkreis: CDU (42.9) vs. AfD (32.1). A Left and a SPD candidate missed the runoff.
Sömmerda: CDU (46.3) vs. AfD (36.4). Two independents scrambled some votes.
Saale-Holzland-Kreis (EIsenberg): CDU (30.1) vs. AfD (25.3%) with a SPD/Left joint-candidate, an independent and a localist at 15 to 12 per cent and the FDP losing their deposit.
Greiz: CDU (39.7%) vs. AfD (29.1%) with the Left, localists and an independent at roughly 10 per cent each
Altenburger Land: CDU (32.2%) vs. AfD (33%) with a former Left Bundestag member at 12 %, and an independent and the SPD behind.
In Hildburghausen Sven Gregor from the (local?) Free Voters (42.4 %) will face the outright neonazi Tommy Frenck (24.9%). The CDU missed out by 0.2 percentage points. AfD did not stand in this race. So you could call it a CDU-AfD runoff by proxy or at least a centre-right far-right runoff.
In two instances it's an SPD incumbent vs. AfD runoff when CDU voters have to decide whether they want to embrace democracy or fascism.
Kyffhäuserkreis (Sondershausen): SPD, inc. (45.7%) vs. AfD (32,8%). CDU came distant third.
Gotha: SPD inc. (43,7%) vs. AfD (31,2%). CDU six points behind.
And there is one incumbent left-wing-independent vs. AfD runoff in the Ilm-Kreis (Arnstadt) where Petra Enders who was a Landtag member for the PDS and later Left Party for several years, but apparently never a party member (48.2) will face AfD's Ralph Gohritz (24.2%)
There are two instances where the AfD is not in a runoff for
LandratIn Unstrut-Hainich-Kreis (Mühlhausen) SPD incumbent Harald Zenker (39,7%) will face Thomas Ahke (25%) of a localist "free voter commitee". Here the CDU and AfD missed the runoff.
In
Weimarer Land the AfD did not field a candidate. Incumbent Christiane Schmidt-Rose from the CDU (49.8 %) will probably cruise to victory over localist candidate Dirk Geyer (30.1 %)
Summarydistrict-free cities (5)
outright CDU wins: 2
CDU-independent runoff: 1
CDU-SPD runoff: 1
FDP-Greens runoff: 1
districts (13)
outright SPD wins: 1
CDU vs. AfD runoffs: 6
other centre-right vs. far-right runoffs: 1
SPD vs. AfD runoffs: 2
Other left vs. AfD runoffs: 1
SPD vs. localist/centre right runoff: 1
CDU vs. localist/centre right runoff: 1
The growing strength of the AfD gets much clearer in the district council (
Kreistag) elections, but that's a chapter for another day.
