(de-news.net) – Local elections in Lower Saxony confirmed the CDU as the state’s most powerful party, while the Left improved its outcome and the AfD made significant gains. The result shows how strong the AfD is in western Germany. Meanwhile, SPD leaders from the party’s left wing are calling for a more direct conflict with the CDU at the federal level and cautioning that further concessions could force the SPD into dangerous electoral territory. They demand that workers’ rights, social protection, democratic structures, redistribution, and democratic oversight of AI be given more attention.
The CDU has again emerged as the strongest party ahead of the SPD in Lower Saxony’s local elections, according to an Infratest dimap projection commissioned by NDR. The results also point to a substantial advance by the AfD, while the Left improved its showing as well. The projection combines results from district council elections, city council elections in independent cities, and the election of the regional assembly in the Hanover region, providing a broad picture of party strength across the state.
The CDU was projected to receive 27.7 percent, a decline of four percentage points from its previous result. The SPD followed with 24.5 percent, down 5.5 points, while the AfD reached 16.5 percent, representing an increase of 11.9 points. The Greens stood at 13.6 percent, down 2.3 points, and the Left at 5.9 percent, up 3.1 points. The FDP was projected at 3.6 percent, a decline of 2.9 points. Taken together, the figures showed a reshaping of the local political balance, with the traditional leading parties losing ground while the AfD recorded the largest increase among the parties included in the projection.
Sebastian Lechner, the CDU’s state chairman, expressed confidence that his party would remain the strongest political force in Lower Saxony. His assessment was accompanied by a more critical acknowledgment of the difficulties facing the party. He said the CDU had encountered dissatisfaction with Berlin in Lower Saxony and acknowledged that disputes surrounding federal policy had contributed to what he characterized as a credibility problem for the party.
The local elections therefore carry significance beyond the composition of municipal and district bodies. In the SPD-Green-governed state, they serve as a gauge of the political mood ahead of the next state election while also providing an indication of how strongly the AfD is performing in a major western German state. The timing gives the result additional political weight: it follows the AfD’s success in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt by one week and comes one week before voters in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin head to the polls. A preliminary statewide result was expected early Monday morning, leaving the projection as an initial rather than final assessment.
Elections put incumbents and challengers to the test
In Wolfsburg, the mayoral contest was settled without a runoff after incumbent Dennis Weilmann of the CDU won 50.1 percent of the vote and thus secured an absolute majority. SPD candidate Oliver Schneider received 15.5 percent, while AfD candidate Thomas Schick won 14.1 percent. The result allowed Weilmann to avoid a second round and retain the office directly.
Wilhelmshaven likewise produced a first-round decision. Independent candidate Eva Maria Haarmann won more than 55 percent of the vote, securing the mayor’s office outright and becoming the city’s first female mayor. The result added another notable individual outcome to a local election in which contests for executive offices were closely watched alongside the broader party results.
In Hanover, by contrast, a runoff appeared likely. With nearly all ballots counted, incumbent Mayor Belit Onay of the Greens held a clear lead over SPD challenger Axel von der Ohe but remained short of the absolute majority required to win outright. The contest was therefore positioned for a second round, illustrating how the broader party balance could translate into more uncertain outcomes in individual municipalities.
In Salzgitter, AfD candidate Patricia Mair advanced to a runoff against incumbent CDU Mayor Frank Klingebiel. Klingebiel received 45.61 percent of the vote, compared with 25.67 percent for Mair. The result placed an AfD candidate in direct competition for the mayoralty despite the incumbent’s substantial first-round lead, underscoring the party’s stronger position in several local contests.
About 6.3 million voters were eligible to participate across Lower Saxony’s districts, cities, and municipalities. In addition to choosing local representatives, voters decided contests for mayors, lord mayors, and district administrators, making the election a wide-ranging test of political support at the local level. The combination of representative and executive races also offered multiple measures of how the parties were performing across different parts of the state.
SPD left seeks alternative vision
Meanwhile, the SPD is facing a separate internal debate over its political direction. Two prominent figures from the party’s left wing within the Bundestag parliamentary group called for a more assertive approach toward the CDU while warning that the SPD could fall into single-digit electoral territory. According to media reports, the position paper was co-written by Annika Klose, a member of the SPD executive and the parliamentary group’s spokeswoman for labor and social affairs, and Hakan Demir, a member of the parliamentary group board and a representative of the Parliamentary Left.
The authors describe the current political environment in unusually stark terms, presenting it as a struggle over the survival of democracy and characterizing the present period as an interregnum. In their assessment, the political system is at a point where democracy’s continued strength cannot be taken for granted. At the same time, they argue that the uncertainty also creates an opportunity for the SPD to redefine and strengthen its political position.
For that reason, Klose and Demir argue that the SPD needs to reinforce itself on several levels, including conceptually, politically and strategically, as well as morally and emotionally. They call for the party to return to what they regard as an inviolable core of social-democratic policy. Cooperation and agreements with other democratic parties are described as inherent to democratic politics, but such compromises, they argue, should not erode the substance of social democracy or leave the party defined primarily by what it prevents rather than what it seeks to achieve.
The authors identify workers’ rights, social protection, and democratic structures in society and the workplace as central elements of this core. They reject the expectation that voters will support the SPD simply because it prevents worse outcomes or repeatedly accepts compromises framed in the language of responsible statesmanship. Responsibility for maintaining social cohesion and democracy, they argue, also rests with the CDU and other democratic parties. From their perspective, measures that weaken the SPD’s fundamental commitments should consequently be opposed rather than accepted as the unavoidable cost of coalition government.
The paper identifies three issues currently being contested within the CDU-SPD coalition as challenges to the foundations of the social order. Two fall within Klose’s policy responsibilities. One concerns proposed changes to the eight-hour workday, which Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, an SPD politician, wants to limit to collectively bargained workplaces. The second is the agreed extension of fixed-term employment contracts from two years to four. The third issue is the coalition’s proposal to prohibit the socialization of rental housing through federal legislation. The authors’ presentation does not acknowledge that corresponding decisions have already been reached within the coalition.
Klose and Demir ultimately call for an alternative vision of society centered on systematic redistribution and artificial intelligence models subject to democratic control. Their argument places a stronger programmatic profile at the center of the SPD’s response to the current political environment, rather than relying primarily on compromise within the governing coalition. Without a substantial change in direction, they warn, the party risks slipping into single-digit electoral territory.
