The municipal elections of Lower Saxony begin to offer results this Sunday, September 13. In Hanover, its capital, the first count places the green mayor Belit Onay clearly ahead of his rivals, while AfD and the CDU maintain a minimal difference.
The cut at 19:07 published by the public television NDR grants Onay 44.5% and the social democrat Axel von der Ohe 21.6%. Jessica Miriam Schülke, from AfD, obtains 12.9%, three tenths more than Peter Karst, from the CDU.
These are counted votes, not a poll. However, only 69 of the 478 electoral districts have been accounted for: 14.4% of the districts, which does not necessarily equate to the same percentage of votes. Positions may change as the count progresses.
What AfD achieved in the previous elections
To measure AfD's result, it is advisable to separate two references. In the 2021 municipal elections, it obtained 4.6% in the aggregate of the elections to the district assemblies of Lower Saxony. That is the closest comparison by type of election, although it does not serve to directly calculate how much its candidate for the mayoralty of Hanover is rising.
In other calls held across the state, the party had already reached higher percentages: 13.2% in the 2024 European elections and 17.8% in the list vote of the 2025 federal elections.
The data comes from the balance of the 2021 municipal elections collected by NDR and from the final results of the German electoral authority for the 2024 European elections and the 2025 federal elections.
| Party | Local 2021: district assemblies | European 2024 | Federal 2025: list vote |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDU | 31.7% | 31.4% | 28.1% |
| SPD | 30.0% | 19.5% | 23.0% |
| The Greens | 15.9% | 12.2% | 11.5% |
| AfD | 4.6% | 13.2% | 17.8% |
| FDP | 6.5% | 5.3% | 4.1% |
| The Left | 2.8% | 2.1% | 8.1% |
The three calls correspond to the entire Lower Saxony, but they elect different institutions. They are not directly comparable to the election of the mayor of Hanover.
When will the result of Lower Saxony be known
The polling stations closed at 18:00, the same time as in mainland Spain. The first figures correspond to direct elections of mayors and district heads; the provisional aggregate of the district assemblies for the entire state is expected on Monday morning.
In Wolfsburg, another of the first advanced counts, the CDU mayor Dennis Weilmann reached 49.8%, while the candidates from the SPD and AfD hovered around 15% each, according to the NDR advance at 19:19.
Lower Saxony is holding local elections, not for the regional parliament. There, where no mayoral candidate achieves an absolute majority, the top two will proceed to a second round on September 27.