The former announcer of the Tagesschau will soon rule the city of Habeck

Mayoral elections in Kiel

The former announcer of the Tagesschau will soon rule the city of Habeck

Mayoral election in Kiel: The former Tagesschau speaker successfully contested the second round of the election. There he must now assert himself against the Green Party.

The new mayor of Schleswig-Holstein state capital Kiel will be decided in a second round of elections in three weeks. In the first round of voting on Sunday, Gerrit Derkowski (independent), supported by the CDU and FDP, and Green Party candidate Samet Yilmaz were ahead, but clearly missed the absolute majority needed for an outright victory. As announced by the city, Derkowski accounted for 28.7 percent. Based on preliminary results, 24.8 percent voted for Yilmaz.

Derkowski and Yilmaz will now face each other again in a runoff election on December 7. Nine candidates ran in the first round of voting. Behind Yilmaz, Ulf Daude, from the SPD, is third with 23.3 percent. Left-wing candidate Björn Thoroe was fourth with 8.1 percent, followed by AfD candidate Hubert Pinot de Kraus with 5.8 percent.

The incumbent mayor of Kiel, Ulf Kampf (SPD) is not seeking re-election after two terms. He turned to state politics. The SPD recently selected him in a member vote as its leading candidate for the 2027 state election, and he is also expected to become the new state leader.

About 190,000 Kiel residents are eligible to vote on Sunday. Based on preliminary calculations, voter turnout reached 48.9 percent.

For the SPD, the results of the first round ended the 16-year term that the mayor had always been given. The CDU last held the executive seat at Kiel City Hall between 2003 and 2009, while the Green Party never held it.

Derkowski, nominated by both the CDU and the FDP, is a career changer in politics. The 56-year-old is a television journalist and has long worked as a presenter for Norddeutscher Rundfunk and the ARD news department. He was part of the speaking team for “Tagesschau,” among others. “It’s great to be number one in the second round, but nothing has been won yet,” he said of NDR after the first round of voting.

Yilmaz is one of the leaders of the Green Party group in the Kiel council and, among other things, his party’s special spokesperson for regulatory and migration policy. The 44-year-old previously worked, among other things, as head of department at the Schleswig-Holstein State Office for the Protection of the Constitution. “We will now mobilize everyone who thinks about us, and I am very confident that we will do it well,” Yilmaz said on NDR on Sunday evening.

Yilmaz received support from the leading Green party. During the election campaign, Robert Habeck called on the public to vote for the main candidate for mayor. “This is an important election for the city of Kiel,” the former economy minister said, among other things, in a video on Instagram. He wants the city on the fjord “to continue on the path of renewal, beauty and climate neutrality,” Habeck said. Therefore, citizens should vote for Yilmaz. Former Vice-Chancellor in Olaf Scholz’s government grew very close to Kiel.

Green Party candidates have been particularly successful with voters in inner cities. In the first round of voting, Derkowski won support from the surrounding district of Kiel. The second round of elections is scheduled for December 7.