The executive chair in the Rostock town hall will remain vacant for another two weeks. The decision as to who is allowed to sit there will only be made in a runoff election on November 27th.
Rostock (dpa/mv) - After the first round of the Rostock mayoral election, the two first-placed candidates Eva-Maria Kröger and Michael Ebert will compete against each other in a runoff election in two weeks. According to the preliminary result on Sunday evening, the left-wing politician Kröger was 25.3 percent of the votes, the non-party Ebert, supported by the CDU and FDP, just behind with 23.6 percent. The SPD candidate, the head of the Rostock State Building and Property Office, Carmen-Alina Botezatu, received 16.5 percent of the votes.
"I'm very happy. But the result means that we have to do our homework for the next two weeks," said Kröger on the evening of the election in Rostock's town hall. Ebert thanked the people of Rostock for the high level of trust they had placed in them. "Now it's time to really invest our strength again."
A total of 17 candidates entered the race for the Rostock mayor post. The election was necessary because the previous incumbent, Claus Ruhe Madsen, moved to Schleswig-Holstein as Economics Minister in June in the cabinet of Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU). With almost 210,000 inhabitants, Rostock is the largest city in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.
Around 172,000 eligible voters were invited to vote. Voters aged 16 and over were entitled to vote. There were 4700 first-time voters. Voter turnout was reported to be 43.7 percent. In the last mayor election in 2019, it was 59 percent in the first ballot and 44.1 percent in the necessary runoff.
85 ballot box and 57 postal ballot boards were responsible for submitting and counting the votes. More than 1,300 election workers had been appointed. The term of office of the mayor is seven years.
The future mayor will have to work with a citizenry in which shifting majorities in decision-making are no exception. The city parliament has 53 members. The left is the strongest parliamentary group there, followed by the CDU/UFR, the Greens, the SPD and the Rostocker Bund parliamentary group.
