Bavaria’s Prime Minister Alfons Goppel today deplored the success of the right-wing National Democratic Party in last Sunday’s municipal elections, when the NDP increased its statewide votes to 3 percent of the Bavarian total, by comparison with 2 percent nationally in the last general elections, last October.
In some Bavarian cities, the percentage of NDP votes was much higher than the state average. The party scored 10.6 of the vote in Bayreuth, 7.5 percent in Nuremberg and 7.4 percent in Kulmbach. The NDP is West Germany’s newest political grouping. It is a fusion of various extremist, right-wing groups, some of them outright neo-Nazi.
“I cannot hide my deep concern over the gain of the National Democratic Party, ” said Mr. Goppel. “The State Government of Bavaria can do nothing by itself to prevent the NDP from participating in the state elections to be held next November, because the party claims to have a democratic viewpoint.” The State Premier conceded that the NDP gains in the municipal voting “showed certain dissatisfactions among the voters with things as they are.”
Despite the high showing in some cities and the 3 percent vote statewide, the NDP still came out far below the Social Democrats, who had polled 52.3 percent of all of the votes in Bavaria. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s Bavarian ally, the Democratic Union, ran second on a statewide basis, getting 27.4 percent of the total vote.
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