Belit Onay re-elected Hannover mayor with 61.5% in Lower Saxony runoff votes

Onay secures second term in Hannover

Belit Onay of the Green party won re-election as Lord Mayor of Hannover in Sunday's runoff vote, securing 61.5% of the ballots across all 478 polling stations. The 45-year-old incumbent defeated his deputy, Axel von der Ohe of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who received 38.5% of the vote. The result confirms Onay for an additional eight-year term leading the administration of Lower Saxony's capital. Voter turnout for the city runoff reached 45%, a decline from the 63.3% recorded during the first election round on 13 September.

The race placed two senior city executives against one another. The 49-year-old von der Ohe serves as Hannover's First City Councillor and treasurer under Onay. In the first round, which featured nine candidates including Peter Karst of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Onay led with 45.6% while von der Ohe finished second with 21.5%. Onay, a former state lawmaker who studied law in Hannover and was born in Goslar to Turkish immigrants, became Hannover's first Green mayor in 2019 after defeating independent candidate Eckhard Scholz in a runoff.

SPD retains Hannover regional presidency

While the SPD lost the city hall contest, the party retained the leadership of the wider Hannover Region. SPD candidate Eva Bender won the regional presidency runoff with 69.4% of the vote, defeating CDU candidate Oliver Junk, who took 30.6%. Bender has served as Hannover's municipal education department head since 2024. She succeeds Steffen Krach, who left the position to take a political role in Berlin.

The regional election was the largest held in Lower Saxony on Sunday, with approximately 888,000 eligible voters. Junk, who served as the Lord Mayor of Goslar from 2011 to 2021, entered the runoff after taking 22.0% in the first round, compared with 30.6% for Bender.

Green victories in Göttingen and Lüneburg

In Göttingen, Green candidate Onyeka Oshionwu won the mayoral runoff with 62.95% of the vote, defeating CDU opponent Ehsan Kangarani, who received 37.05%. Oshionwu, who had backing from Volt and the Alliance for Sustainable Urban Development, succeeds SPD mayor Petra Broistedt, who stepped down after a single term. The SPD had previously governed Göttingen city hall for decades, but SPD nominee Florian Dinger failed to qualify for the second round.

In Lüneburg, incumbent mayor Claudia Kalisch retained her office by securing 52.9% in the runoff against Heiko Meyer of the voter group Die Unabhängigen, who finished with 47.1%. Kalisch, who led the first round with 36.1% to Meyer's 28.2%, ran as an independent candidate to present a nonpartisan administration while maintaining her personal membership in the Green party. In Oldenburg, independent candidate Jascha Rohr won the mayoral runoff with joint endorsement from both the Greens and the CDU.

Municipal runoff mechanics

The Sunday votes completed the municipal election process that began on 13 September across Lower Saxony. Runoff elections take place whenever no candidate obtains an absolute majority above 50% in the initial round, sending the top two candidates into a head-to-head vote. In the initial round, voters chose representatives for nearly 2,200 city councils, municipal councils, and district assemblies across the state. In those legislative contests, the CDU finished as the strongest party statewide, followed by the SPD, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), and the Greens.