A CANDIDATE for the far-right Alternative for Germany was elected on Sunday as the mayor of the eastern town of Pirna.

Tim Lochner who, though not a member, ran on the Alternative for Germany (AfD) ticket, won 38.5 per cent of the vote in a three-way run-off. 

Candidates for the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s main opposition party, and the conservative Free Voters took 31.4 per cent and 30.1 per cent respectively.

Mr Lochner’s win in Pirna, which has about 40,000 inhabitants and is located between Saxony’s state capital Dresden and the Czech border, marks the first time that an AfD candidate has been elected as oberbuergermeister — mayor — of a significantly sized town or city. It is located in a constituency that has elected AfD candidates in Germany’s last two national elections.

AfD’s first mayor was elected in August in the municipality of Raguhn-Jessnitz in the neighbouring eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. The party’s first head of a county administration, Robert Sesselmann, was elected in June in Sonneberg county in neighbouring Thuringia.

Recent national polls have shown the party in second place at 20 per cent or more as discontent with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party government runs high.