October 6, 2026
CDU Prime Minister: Where do the votes for Rausch come from?
The outgoing prime minister of Saxony-Anhalt says he cannot explain where the four additional votes for AfD’s Tobias Rausch as new speaker of the state parliament come from.
Rausch, 35, was elected to the post on Tuesday, a first for the far-right party, with the help of the populist BSW party (see entry below).
The leadership of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) parliamentary group has recommended that the 15 deputies in the state parliament abstain from voting.
But regional CDU leader and current state Prime Minister Sven Schulze said it had become clear this morning that not all party lawmakers were planning to do so.
Some indicated they were considering voting “no”, Schulze told German news agency DPA. “But none of us said we would vote ‘yes,'” he added. “Not a single one.”
Rausch was elected with 48 votes for and 29 against out of 82 eligible votes in the secret ballot. There were five abstentions.
The AfD holds 39 seats in parliament and the BSW five, meaning Rausch also enjoys the support of members of parties other than the AfD and BSW.
The center-left Social Democrats demanded answers. The party’s general secretary, Tim Klüssendorf, called on the CDU to “immediately clarify who in its ranks could have considered this disastrous decision to be right.”
Klüssendorf also criticized the BSW for supporting Rausch’s election.
“The BSW made a conscious decision to elect, for the first time since 1945, a politician from a far-right party as leader of a German parliament,” Klüssendorf told the newspaper. Rhine post newspaper.
In addition to the CDU, the Social Democrats and the BSW, the Left Party and the Greens are also represented in the state parliament. Except for the BSW, the other parties refused to work with the AfD, but some of them voted by secret ballot in favor of Rausch.
Gn world
