Belit Onay wins mayoral runoff election in Hanover

The Green Party politician Belit Onay has won the runoff election for the mayor's office in Hanover and will remain in office for another eight years. In the election, he won 61.5 percent of the vote against his competitor Axel von der Ohe from the SPD, who, according to the city, got 38.5 percent.

If no candidate achieves an absolute majority of 50 percent in the first round of elections, the top two candidates will go to the runoff. Onay was also clearly ahead of von der Ohe in the first lap.

The Green politician has ruled the state capital of Lower Saxony, which is considered his party's stronghold, as mayor since 2019. In the local elections two weeks ago, the Greens became the strongest force in Hanover, ahead of the SPD, making them the largest council faction.

Steffen Krach's successor has been chosen

Onay was born in Goslar in 1981 as the son of Turkish immigrants and studied law in Hanover. From 2013, Onay sat in the Lower Saxony state parliament until his election as mayor. In 2019 he prevailed in the runoff election against the non-party candidate Eckhard Scholz, supported by the CDU.

Nationwide, the CDU emerged as the strongest force in the local elections, in which, among other things, almost 2,200 city and community councils and district councils were elected. Compared to the 2021 local elections, it worsened from 31.7 to 27.2 percent. The SPD followed in second place with 24.6 percent, ahead of the AfD (15.9 percent) and the Greens (14.1 percent).

Other runoff elections have already been decided. In the runoff election for the Hanover region's presidency, SPD candidate Eva Bender clearly beat her challenger Oliver Junk from the CDU with 69.41 percent. She succeeds SPD politician Steffen Krach, who was the SPD's top candidate for the Berlin House of Representatives election.

AfD does not win a runoff election

In Braunschweig, SPD Mayor Thorsten Kornblum (SPD) clearly won with 75.6 percent of the vote. In Oldenburg, Jascha Rohr from the Greens narrowly won with 51.55 percent against SPD candidate Ulf Prange, who got 48.45 percent. Katharina Pötter retained her position as mayor of Osnabrück.