The election in Frankfurt an der Oder, a city on the border with Poland, is between Independent candidate Axel Strasser and AfD contender Wilko Moller.
Voters in the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder have cast their ballots in a run-off election that could give the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the largest opposition party in parliament, its first mayoral victory in a German city.
Independent candidate Axel Strasser and AfD contender Wilko Moller faced off on Sunday after leading the first-round vote on September 21, with Strasser receiving 32.4 percent of the vote and Moller 30.2 percent.
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Candidates from the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and the centre-left Social Democratic Party were eliminated in the first round.
The election comes three days after the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, stripped two AfD lawmakers of their parliamentary immunity, with one accused of defamation and the other of making a Nazi salute, which is illegal in Germany.
Political scientist Jan Philipp Thomeczek, of the University of Potsdam, told the dpa news agency that a victory for Moller would send “a very strong signal” that the anti-immigrant and eurosceptic AfD can succeed in urban areas.
Frankfurt an der Oder is a city in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, located directly on the border with Poland. It is distinct from Frankfurt am Main, the much larger financial hub in western Germany.
The German Association of Towns and Municipalities says there is currently no AfD-affiliated mayor of a city of significant size anywhere in the country.
Tim Lochner became mayor of the town of Pirna, near the Czech border, after being nominated for election in 2023 by the AfD, but he is technically an independent.
An AfD politician, Robert Sesselmann, is the district administrator in the Sonneberg district in Thuringia. There are also AfD mayors in small towns in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
The Brandenburg domestic intelligence service in May classified the AfD’s state branch as “confirmed far-right extremist”, a label the party rejects as a politically driven attempt to marginalise it.
A 1,100-page report compiled by the agency – that will not be made public – concluded that the AfD is a racist and anti-Muslim organisation.
The designation makes the party subject to surveillance and has revived discussion over a potential ban for the AfD, which has launched a legal challenge against the intelligence service.
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio sharply criticised the classification when it was announced, branding it as “tyranny in disguise”, and urged German authorities to reverse the move.
In response, Germany hit back at US President Donald Trump’s administration, suggesting officials in Washington should study history.
“We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped,” said Germany’s Federal Foreign Office in a statement.
The Kremlin also criticised the action against the AfD, which regularly repeats Russian narratives regarding the war in Ukraine, and what it called a broader trend of “restrictive measures” against political movements in Europe.
Brandenburg leaders say the AfD has shown contempt for government institutions, while the state’s domestic intelligence chief, Wilfried Peters, added that the party advocates for the “discrimination and exclusion” of people who do not “belong to the German mainstream”.
Polling stations closed at 6pm local time (16:00 GMT), and results were expected by late Sunday.
