Runoff elections in Lower Saxony: Hanover's town hall remains green

That was a great triumph: “Hannover, I love you,” said Belit Onay (Greens) in German and Turkish at the end of his victory speech on the steps of the town hall. With 61.5 percent, the incumbent mayor clearly beat his challenger Axel von der Ohe (SPD).

The Greens also read this as confirmation of Onay's plans for a car-free or at least car-poor city center - because they did particularly well in the directly affected inner city districts.

It was the city center plans that – at least superficially – caused the green-red town hall coalition to fail. For almost three years, Onay had to govern without his own majority in the council and against an informal German alliance made up of the SPD, FDP and CDU.

From the outset, however, the Greens had suspected that the collapse of the coalition was more about party tactics and bruised SPD egos than about substantive dissent. Now Onay's challenger Axel von der Ohe (SPD) has failed miserably with his plan to retake the town hall.

For 73 years, this town hall was viewed as the SPD's natural inheritance and Onay's first victory in November 2019 was viewed as a historical anomaly, a slip-up fueled by frustration over the town hall affair and unjustified bonuses for top staff under the then SPD mayor Stefan Schostok. But now Onay has not only maintained his result, but has significantly improved it.

Von der Ohe (SPD) announced on election evening that he now wanted to return to his desk as treasurer and first city councilor - and thus Onay's deputy. This annoys many Greens because they accuse him of having played a key role in the breakup of the coalition and of not always playing fairly in the election campaign.

In his first interview after the election, Onay also accused his challenger of using internal information from negotiations over the Karstadt property in the city center to campaign.

Nevertheless, people will probably have to pull themselves together in the town hall: Red-Green would have a narrow majority, the only alternative would be an alliance of the Greens with the CDU and FDP plus individual representatives from Volt and the Sartire party.

You can see in the Hanover region that this SPD result is not a rejection of the party as a whole. The regional president will be Eva Bender (SPD), who clearly prevailed against her competitor Oliver Junk (CDU) with 69.4 percent. She will be the first woman to fill this position, which was created 25 years ago, and will thus succeed Steffen Krach (SPD).

Krach had moved to Berlin to join the SPD in the fight for the Red City Hall. A house search made headlines, citing irregularities in a tender process from his time as regional president. The allegations, which Krach rejects, have not yet been fully clarified.

The SPD candidate Bender does not seem to have been harmed by her party colleague's scandal. Previously, she was head of culture and education at the town hall and worked with Onay there without much public friction.