Far-right voted out after Hanau attack

VOTERS in Hamburg appear to have sent a stark message to the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AFD) by evicting them from the city’s parliament just days after a far-right terror attack in central Germany killed nine members of the immigrant community.

Last night, exit polls suggested that the AFD received 4.8 per cent of the vote, a result that would put them below the 5 per cent required to win representation in any German legislature.

The Social Democrats claimed victory with 38 per cent, according to exit polls, while the Greens more than doubled their share to 25 per cent. Final results will not be released for two weeks.

Local polling suggested that the AFD would struggle to improve on the 6.1 per cent it achieved in the liberal city in 2015. But the extent of the loss, and reports of a high turnout, suggested voters had deserted them after a far-right gunman attacked two shisha bars in the city of Hanau last Wednesday.

Politicians across the political spectrum pointed blame at the AFD in the wake of the attack, claiming that their anti-muslim rhetoric motivated Tobias Rathjen to carry out his crime.

Alexander Gauland, the AFD leader, rejected “political instrumentalisation of the crime”, claiming that 43-year-old Mr Rathjen was too mentally disturbed to have had a political ideology.

But surveys carried out in recent days showed that 60 per cent of Germans believed that the far-right party bore some blame.

Yesterday, an estimated 6,000 people marched through Hanau to show solidarity with the victims, carrying sings reading “love for all, hate for no one” as well as Turkish and Romanian flags.

Mr Rathjen killed 10 people, including his mother, before shooting himself.