Germany’s far-right AfD party will return to Hamburg’s state Parliament by the skin of its teeth, official results showed, after exit polls from weekend elections suggested it would crash out.
Initially predicted to pick up 4.8% of Sunday’s vote in the city State, the final count put AfD at 5.3%, just above the 5% minimum required to enter Parliament under German electoral law.
The anti-immigrant party nonetheless suffered losses compared to the last State elections in 2015, when they picked up 6.1% of the vote.
Largely unpopular in the cosmopolitan port city, the AfD struggled further in the wake of a racist attack which killed nine in central German city Hanau last week.
“Getting in by a whisker is a huge success in this case because we were subjected to campaigns from the entire political establishment of the city of Hamburg,” said regional AfD leader Dirk Nockemann.
The liberal FDP party, meanwhile, also appeared to edge over the five-percent hurdle to retain its place in Hamburg’s parliament.
Final estimates put the FDP on 5% exactly, although with some constituencies yet to finalise their counts, their fate remained in the balance on Monday morning.
The liberal party was hit hard by a recent scandal in the eastern state of Thuringia where their candidate was elected state premier with the help of votes from the AfD.
The move broke a taboo on cooperation with the far right and unleashed a national scandal which also plunged Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU party into crisis.
The centre-right party also suffered embarrassment at the Hamburg polls, slipping to just 11.2% of the vote, a showing nearly five percentage points worse than in 2015.
