On Sunday, around 13.7 million people went to the polls in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. The results were losses for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and a bitter blow for the environmentalist Greens.
The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) saw a respectable showing, but it was the partly right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) that made the strongest gains.
At stake in the local elections were around 20,000 parliamentary seats in almost 400 towns and municipalities, as well as mayorships in larger cities.
