Erfurt (dpa/th) – After the CDU, the Thuringian fire brigade associations provide the most newly elected mayors in the Free State. A total of 26 mayoral posts were filled on Sunday with candidates who were nominated by local fire brigade associations, according to the State Statistics Office. The CDU had 41 mayors, the SPD provided five community leaders. None of the other parties in the state parliament are newly represented in the town halls. The majority of the candidates, however, competed as individual applicants.
After the mayoral election, run-off elections are expected to be held in 26 of 325 municipalities in two weeks. It is about full-time positions in two places. Around 210,000 Thuringians were called to vote on Sunday. At around 51 percent, voter turnout was lower than six years ago, when it was around 54 percent. In Kloster Veßra (Hildburghausen district), the candidate Tommy Frenck, who was listed as a right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, clearly lost around 29 percent of the votes to incumbent Wolfgang Möller.
