The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Lower Saxony will contest the Sebastian Lechner with Sebastian Lechner as its lead candidate 2027 state election. The state committee The party’s elected its state and parliamentary group leader on 14 November 2026 at a small party conference in Hanover unanimously. According to the German Press Agency, there was no opposing candidate.
Lechner wants to replace Minister President Olaf Lies of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The election is scheduled for 26 September 2027. Lower Saxony is governed by a coalition of the SPD and the Greens. At the 2022 state election, the CDU won 28.1 per cent of the vote, behind the SPD on 33.4 per cent.
The Greens have already chosen their education minister and deputy minister president, Julia Willie Hamburg as their lead candidate. The CDU’s decision now settles who will lead the largest opposition party in the election campaign. Voters will not decide the make-up of the new state parliament and the future governing majority until September 2027.
Lechner has been a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament since 2013. After the CDU’s election defeat in 2022, he took over as leader of its parliamentary group. He has also led the state party since January 2023. The trained economist worked, among other things, as a research assistant before entering parliament and later ran a tea company.
According to NDR, Lechner names security, education, the economy and an effective state as key campaign issues. The small party conference was also due to see the presentation of a Lower Saxony plan According to a German Press Agency report, this is intended to form the basis of the election manifesto and cover, among other things, the economy, education and domestic security.
How state and federal politics intersect during the election campaign was illustrated by Lechner’s call for a lower electricity tax. Speaking to Deutschlandfunk on 14 November, he said his party needed to regain trust through decisions in Berlin. He pointed to the federal government’s coalition agreement and called for the tax cut to be implemented.
Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil of the SPD currently sees no financial scope for such a cut, the broadcaster reports, but is open to proposals on how to offset the cost. Lechner expects him to put forward proposals for the coalition committee.
Editor: Mira Cadena (Article created with AI assistance).