Lower Bavaria
“This is a pure Aiwanger election,” was heard from election observers in the Landshut town hall on Sunday evening. Hubert Aiwanger was already heading straight for the first direct mandate for the Free Voters. And you also heard: Lower Bavaria is Aiwanger country. There was talk of a landslide victory. The fact that almost no other FW politician is mentioned in connection with the party is not surprising when you take a closer look at the results in Lower Bavaria. The CSU still provides the majority of direct candidates here. But when it comes to second votes, the Free Voters win and sometimes overtake the CSU, such as in the Regen/Freyung-Grafenau constituency or in Deggendorf. In Rottal-Inn, the Free Voters’ second vote share is 40 percent. In Dingolfing, the party also outperformed the CSU in terms of overall vote share with 32.2 percent. In the Landshut district, Aiwanger’s hometown, the Free Voters were also far ahead of the CSU in terms of the share of the first votes. In Rottenburg, Aiwanger’s birthplace, he received 65.6 percent of the first votes.
The AfD has also made significant gains in Lower Bavaria. The AfD celebrated its greatest successes here in 2018. Especially in the Regen/Freyung-Grafenau district on the Czech border. She received 16 percent of the vote here five years ago. And while Bavaria as a whole has now, to a certain extent, followed this trend, the party in Lower Bavaria is presenting it again; this time, according to preliminary results, they have 21.8 percent of the total votes there.
Swabia
Many CSU greats have resigned in Swabia, from the north down to the Allgäu. Nevertheless, all of the new CSU candidates have confidently won their constituencies, such as the mayor of Altusried, Joachim Konrad, as the successor to the long-time CSU parliamentary group leader Thomas Kreuzer in Kempten-Oberallgäu. The Free Voters, who, like the parliamentary manager Fabian Mehring in Dillingen, said they had hopes of a direct entry into the state parliament, have remained far behind their CSU competitors. This also applies to the two Green candidates Stephanie Schuhknecht and Cemal Bozoğlu, who ultimately had no chance in Augsburg-West and Augsburg-East. The AfD also achieved strong results in some regions in Swabia, such as Günzburg: Gerd Mannes was the second strongest force here, behind CSU newcomer Jenny Schack, with 24.4 percent.
Upper Bavaria
In the Neuburg-Schrobenhausen district, State Secretary Roland Weigert achieved the feat of entering the history books together with his party leader Hubert Aiwanger as the first directly elected representative of the Free Voters: Over the course of the evening, the head-to-head race with the CSU candidate solidified Matthias Englhuber’s lead over Weigert, in the end he has 31.6 percent of the votes. Otherwise there are no surprises in the administrative district, on the contrary: Martin Huber, general secretary of the CSU, achieved a strong result with more than 40 percent. Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber (Berchtesgadener Land) won 37.4 percent for the CSU as of 10:30 p.m. on Sunday evening. No surprises for the CSU, however, also means losing some voting districts in Munich again: with Milbertshofen, Schwabing, Mitte and Giesing, four out of nine voting districts will probably go to the Greens.
Upper Franconia
In the future, the youngest member of the state parliament, or at least the youngest constituency member, is likely to come from the Hof district. The youngest person in the history of the state parliament was the Green Florian Siekmann; he entered parliament five years ago at the age of 23. Kristan von Waldenfels (CSU) is now three months younger than Siekmann. And he entered the state parliament with an outstanding first vote result: The student of economics and philosophy, who recently submitted his final thesis, won 49.6 percent of the votes and was therefore more than 31 percentage points ahead of his second-place competitor. When he was elected honorary mayor of the town of Lichtenberg three years ago, Waldenfels was the youngest mayor in Germany. A year ago, surprisingly for many, he prevailed in the party’s internal race against the favored CSU state parliament deputy Alexander König, who had represented his party in parliament for 24 years. Waldenfels had already announced before the election that he would remain an honorary mayor in Lichtenberg if he were to enter parliament. The Hof constituency used to be hotly contested between the CSU and SPD. After long-time SPD MP Klaus Adelt no longer stood, the Social Democrats fell to twelve percent of the initial votes. In the first votes, the AfD candidate Oliver Koller is now in second place with 17.7 percent.
Lower Franconia
In Würzburg, at the beginning of the evening, there were initially signs of a defense of the direct mandate for the Green MP Patrick Friedl. In 2018, he was the only direct candidate outside Munich to be able to win a constituency from the CSU. His triumph was narrow five years ago; on Sunday evening, when counting began, he was ahead of his CSU candidate Andrea Behr, a self-employed dentist who was running for the first time, by up to seven percentage points. Hardly anywhere in Bavaria did a race develop as excitingly as in Würzburg; at 8:30 p.m. Behr was suddenly ahead of Friedl. At 10:17 p.m., after counting almost all areas, Behr was more than three percentage points ahead of Friedl.
A disappointment for the Greens. Especially since CSU Ms. Behr made international headlines during the election campaign. Of course, she emphasized that she had been misunderstood. During an election discussion about financial benefits for citizens’ benefit recipients, she responded to an interjection “Shouldn’t the children eat anything? Then it will be cheaper” with the remark: “They can go to the food bank, they are entitled to do so.” In the SZ conversation, Behr then made it clear that she had not noticed on the podium that the heckling was aimed at children. Nevertheless, the Würzburg Greens have since then considered their chances of repeating their victory to be even better. Friedl is considered a fact-oriented environmental politician, an issue that is particularly caught up in the Würzburg climate basin. Friedl says he neither chose nor desired the explosiveness of this topic. Of course, the fact that this is becoming increasingly important in the university town of Würzburg cannot be ignored – it also dominated the election campaign. Markus Söder personally tried to intervene in Würzburg several times. The defeat in 2018 was considered a serious disgrace for the CSU, but it has now apparently been able to correct this.
Middle Franconia
Nuremberg-Nord is traditionally the most hotly contested constituency in Middle Franconia. The SPD has already been able to take the direct mandate from the CSU, but now it is primarily the Greens who are looking for a direct mandate. That may also have been the main reason why the city’s most prominent Green politician, Verena Osgyan, changed voting districts. Until now she had run in the west of Nuremberg, but the former mayoral candidate has now moved to Nuremberg-Nord, where there are numerous attractive residential areas for academics. However, the SPD once again offered its most high-profile MP in the city: Arif Taşdelen, the former general secretary of the SPD, who stumbled over the Bavarian Jusos’ decision to no longer invite him to their events as an “undesirable person” – his behavior was off several female Juso members perceived it as allegedly inappropriate. When two from the more left-wing political camp argue, the third is happy: CSU city councilor Thomas Pirner, a master craftsman who was running for the first time, emerged victorious from the three-way battle. Shortly before all areas were counted, Pirner got 31.3 percent, Osgyan 27, Taşdelen 14.3.
The outcome is traditionally much less exciting in Nuremberg East, a constituency dominated by conservatives. Markus Söder clearly won here with 41.5 percent, although not outstandingly. The university town of Erlangen, where the Greens are always quietly hoping for a sensation, also went to the CSU celebrities: Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann clearly won with 36.6 percent ahead of Green MP Christian Zwanziger with 28.6 percent.
Upper Palatinate
In the Upper Palatinate’s largest constituency in terms of eligible voters, a non-CSU member definitely had a chance of winning the direct mandate: Green Jürgen Mistol was narrowly defeated by Franz Rieger in 2018. The lawyer, who was convicted of extortion by the Regensburg regional court in November 2021, did not appear again. In his place, the CSU appointed the much less well-known police officer Jürgen Eberwein. It still wasn’t enough, Mistol lost to Eberwein by 23.8 votes to 30.2. The Greens received 23.9 percent of the total number of votes, just below their result from 2018, when they achieved one of the best results for their party in all of Bavaria in Regensburg. However, the new hope of the Regensburg SPD, Sebastian Koch, was far behind with 11.4 percent of the first votes and 10.4 percent of the total votes. The mayor of Wenzenbach replaced Margit Wild, a long-time member of the state parliament, as a candidate.