The far-right party "Alternative for Germany" failed to win mayoral posts in the runoffs held on Sunday in the most populous state of the Federal Republic - North Rhine-Westphalia, DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
The AfD lost the vote in the cities of Gelsenkirchen and Duisburg to the candidates of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), and in Hagen the candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) received the most votes.
Social Democrat Sören Link was re-elected as mayor of Duisburg with the support of 78.6% of the votes, while his AfD rival Carsten Gross won 21.4%.
In Hagen, the CDU candidate Dennis Rebein became the winner of the second round of the elections with 71.7% of the votes, and the AfD candidate Michael Eiche was supported by 28.3%.
Social policy expert Andrea Henze of the SPD won the mayoralty of Gelsenkirchen with 66.9%, while his far-right rival Norbert Emmerich of the SPD received 33.1%. Gelsenkirchen is the city with the highest unemployment rate in Germany.
The first round of the elections in North Rhine-Westphalia took place on September 14, when the AfD managed to triple its result compared to the previous vote in the state.
Almost 150 runoffs were held in North Rhine-Westphalia on Sunday, after no candidate managed to get more than 50% of the vote in the first round.
Despite losing the runoffs, the AfD leader in North Rhine-Westphalia, Martin Vincenz, assessed his party's overall performance as positive. "The trend is right. (…) We have a number of interesting local elections coming up in 2026. We will definitely benefit from the favorable wind coming from North Rhine-Westphalia," added Vincenz.