The CDU remains the strongest party in the Rhine-Sieg district. The Greens were the second strongest party in the district; the SPD slid by almost 14 per cent.

6pm sharp and loud cheering comes from the “Pauke” bistro in the west of the city. The first predictions from the ARD TV studio flicker across the screen. The table shows that more than 22 per cent of Germans have voted for the Greens. The Bonn Green candidate Alexandra Geese therefore knows: she is in. In future, the 50-year-old will no longer travel to the European parliament to translate. “It’s much more than I hoped for,” she says and laughs. “It’s a landslide.”

Alexandra Geese, the mother of three daughters, who comes from Bonn and sat her school leaving exams at the Friedrich-Ebert gymnasium, does not suspect in the early evening that support for the Greens has also gone through the roof in Bonn. They get their best result of 42 per cent in their traditional stronghold in the inner Nordstadt election district. In the Baumschul district/Südstadt, they achieve 41.4 per cent. In Kessenich it is 40.1 per cent. The Green party spokeswomen Andrea Bauer and Katrin Uhlig are speechless. Bauer: “My vocabulary is usually larger, but at the moment all I can think of is: it is a stunning result for the Bonn Greens.”

The heads of Bonn’s Christian Democrats and many of their supporters have gathered in “Meyer’s” in Poppelsdorf. Unlike in the 2014 election, the CDU Member of the European Parliament Axel Voss does not need to worry about his return to the European Parliament. The native of Hamelin, who has lived in Bonn for more than 30 years, this time already knows after the first projections that he has secured his seat in Brussels with fourth place on the NRW list. Nevertheless, the mood is subdued. “I’d hoped for a better nationwide result for the CDU,” he admits.

Looking at the CDU’s results in Bonn, district chairman Katzidis is surprised and also contrite. “I didn’t think we’d do so badly. I see this as a task for us, especially given the C in our party: we must no longer leave the issue of climate and environmental protection to the Greens alone.” Katzidis is now not only demanding greater discussion of the issue by the CDU at a federal level but he also wants to bring it more into focus in the district.

The Bonn SPD, who had not invited outsiders to an election party but rather followed the outcome of the European election with its leaders in their party’s premises on Clemens-August-Platz, experienced a disaster. Only in the local election district of Tannenbusch was it the best of all the parties with 21.4 per cent. “We are all fairly deflated,” says SPD subdistrict head Gabriel Kunze.

Meanwhile, the FDP district chair Franziska Müller-Rech and council faction leader Werner Hümmrich gathered in the press centre in the city hall. They were satisfied with the FDP result in Bonn and thanked their EU candidate Elmar Conrads-Hassel for the campaign in Bonn. The Bonn district councillor never had a real chance because of his low position on the list of federal liberals.

AfD district chairperson Sascha Ulbrich is at the entrance to the press centre. He makes no secret of his disappointment that his party made hardly any gains in Bonn. His analysis: “Bonn is a university city with a rather left leaning university community. The established parties are also clearly more deeply rooted in Bonn than in other cities.” (Original text: Lisa Inhoffen, Judith Nikula. Translation: kc)