Since Mr. Merz won the national election in February, the AfD has continued to surge in popularity, with national polls showing that a quarter of voters back it.
But even if a far-right wave did not materialize, it was another sign of the rightward drift of politics in Germany.
Mr. Merz’s conservative party traditionally performs well in rural areas, small towns and villages.
For the Social Democrats, Sunday’s election results hurt, but perhaps not as badly as some in the party had feared.
Many voters there are fed up with the Social Democrats, who have been running Gelsenkirchen for the past 15 years.
In municipal elections that were widely regarded as a gauge of the mood of the nation, voters in hundreds of cities, towns, and villages throughout Germany’s most populous state on Sunday decisively favored Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative party.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, almost tripled its vote share from the state’s last municipal elections five years ago, but the party did not win the entire state as some had feared.
More than one in five German voters reside in North Rhine-Westphalia, where preliminary results from Sunday night’s races across the state show that Mr. Dot Merz’s Christian Democrats received nearly 35 percent of the vote, while the AfD received less than half that, at about 15 percent. Though they have no bearing on national politics, Sunday’s municipal elections were Mr. Dot Merz’s first electoral test since taking office in May.
According to national polls, a quarter of voters support the AfD, which has continued to grow in popularity since Mr. Dot Merz won the February national election. The 18 percent that West German voters gave them in February, however, was not met in North Rhine-Westphalia, where voters elected mayors, city councilors, and other regional representatives.
However, even in the absence of a far-right wave, it was another indication of Germany’s political shift to the right.
Hendrik Wüst, the conservative governor of the state, told reporters after basking in his own party’s victory, “This result should give us pause and should prevent us from resting easy.”.
The junior partner in Mr. Merz’s government coalition, the center-left Social Democrats, lost a few percentage points of the vote but avoided the crushing defeat that many had anticipated.
The Green party was the night’s biggest loser, dropping more than seven percentage points in all races compared to five years ago, when it achieved its highest-ever state municipal election result.
This is what you need to know about Sunday’s vote.
In terms of national politics, what does this mean?
The outcomes in the west on Sunday should benefit Mr. Dot Merz in Berlin on Monday, even if the election has no immediate repercussions.
Mr. Merz’s conservative party has historically done well in small towns, villages, and rural areas. Voters may have placed less importance on Mr. Merz’s policies—such as attempting to stop migration, restart the economy, or rebuild the army—than on more regional concerns because support in these areas is primarily determined by the track records of local politicians.
Though maybe not as severely as some Social Democrats had feared, Sunday’s election results were painful for the party.
Bärbel Bas, the Social Democratic minister of labor and a native of North Rhine-Westphalia who had spent some time campaigning there, acknowledged that they had failed to halt the downward trend. Preliminary results show that the party received 22 percent of the state’s votes, which is higher than the 15 percent it currently receives nationally, which is better than what its current national support would have suggested.
Speaking of the Social Democrats, Andreas Blätte, a political scientist at the University of Duisburg-Essen, stated, “The AfD benefits from the weakness of the SPD.”.
Among the areas where the AfD performed well was Gelsenkirchen, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia that was once a hub for coal mining and heavy industry.
The city has a sizable immigrant population, high unemployment, and poverty. The Social Democrats have been in power in Gelsenkirchen for the past 15 years, and many voters are tired of them.
Before the vote, Jörg Pfnister, who owns a small wine bar at an outdoor market where locals gather every Wednesday night, stated, “I could see, given the mood and the fact that people are ready to teach someone a lesson” that the AfD could do quite well.
Regards, Mr. Former employee of the nearby Opel auto factory, Pfnister, claimed to have witnessed the decline of the city’s downtown as residents chose to shop at cheaper or migrant-run supermarkets on the outskirts of the city rather than the more costly downtown.
Although he did not defeat the Social Democratic candidate, Norbert Emmerich, a financial advisor and member of the Gelsenkirchen City Council and the AfD’s candidate for mayor, advanced to the runoff, which will take place in multiple cities throughout the state in two weeks.
