German conservative opposition seen winning 2 state elections, with far-right making gains

Boris Rhein, top candidate of the CDU and Minister President of Hesse, celebrates at the CDU election party, in Wiesbaden, Germany, Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023. Germany's center-right opposition was set to win two state elections on Sunday at the halfway mark of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unpopular national government, according to exit polls, which showed gains for a far-right party.

About 9.4 million people were eligible to vote for the new state legislature in Bavaria and around 4.3 million in neighboring Hesse, a region that includes Germany’s financial capital, Frankfurt. Both states were already led by the country’s main opposition Union bloc, made up of the Christian Democratic Union and the Bavaria-only Christian Social Union.

They showed disappointing results for the three national governing parties — Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. Hesse’s conservative governor, Boris Rhein, was challenged by both his current Green deputy and by the Social Democrats’ candidate, national Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.

Lars Klingbeil, one of the Social Democrats’ leaders, said voters sent “a signal to the three parties that there needs to be a different speed when it comes to solving the problems of the people in this country.” AfD’s chief whip in the German parliament, Bernd Baumann, said that “the wind is changing in Germany — it is switching from left to right.” He charged that the mainstream conservative opposition, which has assailed the government on migration, is “twisting in the wind, and AfD is the wind.”

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