Saxony-Anhalt - AfD cannot fill 120 seats after local elections
Large blank and nothing behind? It frequently happens that parties do not have enough candidates on their ballot lists to fill all the seats after the election. However, in the case of the communal election in Saxony-Anhalt, there were 162 seats that remained empty. The state election commissioner confirmed this upon request.
For individual candidates and voter associations, there were 17 empty seats each, for the CDU there were 6, for the SPD and FDP one each. However, the AfD has a significant gap: they could not fill 120 seats. This has direct consequences on the representation ratio in the respective communal parliaments.
The AfD could not fill many seats in the communal election 2019
The AfD had gained significantly more votes in the communal election at the beginning of June, with 28.1% of the votes, the most in the state. They were just ahead of the CDU with 26.8%. In the communal election 2019, the AfD had been unable to fill seats in some places, including Bernburg.
The AfD not only had the problem that they often put forward too few candidates. In some cases, individual candidates had not accepted their mandates, reported a spokeswoman for the state election commissioner. Out of approximately 4,400 seats to be allocated in the city and community councils and in the associations, the 162 empty seats correspond to an approximate share of around 3.7%.
According to the statements of the state election commissioner, all seats could be filled in the Landkreises and the city-free cities Magdeburg, Halle, and Dessau-Roßlau. According to communal law, the seats remain vacant until the end of the election period.
The unfilled seats from the Local elections in Saxony-Anhalt considerably impacted the AfD, as they were unable to fill 120 of them. This is significantly more than any other party, highlighting their challenge in fully representing their chosen candidates in municipalities.
Despite gaining the most votes in the communal election of 2019, the AfD faced challenges in filling seats in some districts, such as Bernburg, leading to vacancies in their representation.
