Candidate of the right-wing anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), René Stadtkewitz, won a landslide victory in the first round of the mayoral election in Zehdenick, marking the first such electoral success for his party in the eastern state of Brandenburg.
Stadtkewitz secured 58.4 per cent of the vote in Zehdenick, located north of the German capital Berlin, in the election held on Sunday, 10 May, winning an absolute majority in the first round and thereby avoiding a run-off.
Free Democratic Party (FDP) candidate Stephan von Hundelshausen came second with 28.6 per cent of the vote, while independent candidate Wolf-Gernot Richardt finished third with 7.8 per cent.
With the victory, Stadtkewitz becomes the first directly elected AfD mayor in Brandenburg, giving the result historic significance. Before him, AfD member Arne Raue served as mayor of the town of Jüterbog; however, he had run as an independent during his electoral victories in 2011 and 2019, joining AfD only later, in 2024. In 2025, Raue won a mandate in the federal parliament.
Stadtkewitz previously served as a member of the Berlin state parliament representing the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), until he was expelled from the party after inviting Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders to Berlin. He later founded the German Freedom Party and served as its federal chairman until 2013. The party, often described as part of the early ‘European counter-jihad movement’, was dissolved in 2016, largely because its voter base overlapped with the more popular AfD, founded in 2013.
The election was triggered early after the town elected independent candidate Alexander Kretzschmar as mayor in March 2025. Kretzschmar went on sick leave just 11 days after taking office and has remained absent ever since. During his absence, deputy mayor Marco Kalmutzke has overseen Zehdenick’s administrative affairs.
The latest electoral breakthrough is yet another sign of AfD’s rise as the most popular party in Germany and the country’s largest opposition force. Recent nationwide polling indicates that the anti-immigration party has reached record support levels of up to 28 per cent, placing it ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU.
According to multiple surveys published in recent weeks, the largest share of Germans would also prefer the next chancellor to come from AfD, while a CDU–AfD coalition has emerged as the most favoured governing arrangement among voters.
The trend appears particularly strong in eastern Germany—AfD’s traditional stronghold—where dissatisfaction with the current CDU–SPD coalition exceeds 90 per cent, compared to 87 per cent in western Germany, according to a Forsa survey commissioned by RTL and ntv.
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