Saxony's interior minister loses direct mandate to AfD candidate

Saxony's Interior Minister Armin Schuster missed out on a direct mandate for the CDU in the state election. With 33.4 percent, the 63-year-old was clearly defeated by AfD candidate Martin Braukmann, who achieved 45.4 percent in the constituency of Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge 4. The region is considered a stronghold of the AfD, which was also clearly ahead of the CDU (30.8 percent) in the second votes with 41.6 percent.

Schuster's first attempt

Schuster comes from Rhineland-Palatinate. In the 1990s, he worked as the head of a federal police station in Saxony. In 2009, he entered the Bundestag for the CDU, but always came away empty-handed when it came to the distribution of posts in the parliamentary group's executive committee. From November 2020, he was then head of the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance until he succeeded Saxony's Interior Minister Roland Wöller in April 2022.