{"id":424779,"date":"2025-09-14T22:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T22:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/424779\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T22:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T22:43:10","slug":"far-right-gains-stronger-foothold-in-western-germany-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/424779\/","title":{"rendered":"Far right gains stronger foothold in western Germany \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The AfD won nearly 15 percent of votes in the state, coming in third place, according to the initial results<\/a>. In the last municipal elections in North Rhine-Westphalia five years ago, the party won 5.1 percent of votes. In the city of Gelsenkirchen, a former center of heavy industry, the AfD candidate appeared set to face a center-left politician in a runoff for mayor.<\/p>\n

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u2019s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) still came out clearly ahead of all other parties with 33 percent of the total vote, according to initial results. Merz\u2019s coalition partners in the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) \u2014\u00a0once the dominant political power in North Rhine-Westphalia\u2019s industrial centers \u2014\u00a0came in second with around 22 percent, according to an early tally. These vote shares are slightly lower than results for the parties in the state\u2019s municipal elections five years ago.<\/p>\n

The elections, while having no direct effect on national politics, were widely seen as a barometer of the national mood, coming roughly four months after Merz took office. Some of Germany\u2019s conservative and centrist politicians expressed relief that the CDU and SPD performed as well as they did, since both parties have seen their national poll numbers slump while the AfD\u2019s have risen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll Christian Democrats will be delighted with this result,\u201d Hendrik W\u00fcst, the conservative premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, said in a televised interview shortly after the polls closed. At the same time, W\u00fcst added, the AfD\u2019s strong result \u201ccannot allow us sleep peacefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

Centrist politicians must ask themselves \u201cwhat the right answers are when it comes to poverty and migration,\u201d W\u00fcst said. \u201cAre all parts of our welfare system really fair? What about problems with housing costs? Some issues have been allowed to drag on for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"German Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u2019s conservative Christian Democratic Union still came out clearly ahead of all other parties with 33 percent of the total vote, according to initial results. | Andreas Arnold\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

In Germany\u2019s federal election in February<\/a>, the AfD\u00a0came in second with 20.6 percent of the vote, the best national result for a far-right party in Germany\u2019s postwar history. The AfD\u2019s success rested largely on its dominance in the former East Germany, where it came first in virtually all regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The AfD won nearly 15 percent of votes in the state, coming in third place, according to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[32410,6906,33,2000,299,1105,1945,1824,91238,2348,806,6657,23901,47],"class_list":{"0":"post-424779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-alice-weidel","9":"tag-democratic-party","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-far-right","14":"tag-friedrich-merz","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-hendrik-wust","17":"tag-history","18":"tag-industry","19":"tag-migration","20":"tag-national-politics","21":"tag-poll"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115205073135488987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}