The AfD lost the second election for the district office in the Saale-Orla district in eastern Thuringia. The CDU candidate Christian Herrgott prevailed against AfD man Uwe Thrum on Sunday, as the state official announced. Thrum entered the second round of elections with a clear lead and hoped for the AfD’s second national district office, after Robert Sesselmann in Sonneberg. After all voting districts were counted, CDU candidate Herrgott received 52.4 percent of the votes.
Thrum achieved 47.6 percent. The 39-year-old Herrgott is general secretary of the Thuringian CDU and has been a member of the state parliament since 2014. His first day as district administrator is scheduled for February 9.
High turnout in elections
Of the more than 66,000 eligible voters, approximately 69 percent participated in the second election. In the first round two weeks ago, turnout was around 66 percent, twice as high as in the last district elections of 2018. Thrum dominated the first round with 45.7 percent of the votes. Good Lord came in at 33.3 percent. The Thuringian AfD is classified as definitively right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Germany this weekend against right-wing extremism. According to the police, up to 100,000 people turned out in Düsseldorf alone. Several thousand people also attended the protests in Thuringia. Last week, a broad alliance of more than 3,400 municipalities, associations, companies, churches and individuals presented themselves to the public in the Free State under the title ‘Cosmopolitan Thuringia’.
Voting test for further elections
The elections were seen as the first test of sentiment for the upcoming elections in Thuringia. A number of seats for district administrators and mayors will be filled in the Free State in May. The state elections are scheduled for September 1. The AfD is well ahead in surveys and recently reached values above 30 percent. The situation is similar in Saxony and Brandenburg, where elections will also take place in the autumn.
The rural district of Saale-Orla is located in the southeast of Thuringia and borders Bavaria and Saxony. According to data from state statistical offices, it was one of the ten districts with the lowest salaries per employee in Germany in 2021, with a gross salary of 29,048 euros. According to the German Federation of Trade Unions in Hesse-Thuringia, about 40 percent of employees belong to the minimum wage sector.
Thuringia implemented payment cards for asylum seekers
Like other regions in Thuringia, the district is struggling with declining population numbers: where there were 103,000 people in 1994, there were around 79,000 at the end of 2022, half of whom were 50 years or older. The largest town, Pößneck, has about 12,000 inhabitants.
As head of the district administration, a district administrator must primarily implement decisions taken by the district council, but also by the state parliament and the federal parliament. He can also clarify regional issues such as childcare or the renovation of buildings and roads. District administrators can also make decisions about the housing and care of refugees in the district. Recently, several CDU-run districts in Thuringia have introduced payment cards for refugees.
Source: Krone
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