Hard-right AfD will be the largest party in Germany by the next election, its leader says after huge boost in support saw them finishing second to mainstream conservatives

The leader of Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right Germany political party, has boldly claimed it will be the largest party in the country by the next election, after it finished second in Sunday’s federal election. 

Alice Weidel, 46, claimed her party could ‘overtake the CDU [Christian Democratic Union] within the next few years for the next election… to become the strongest’ political force in Germany. 

Sunday’s election saw AfD, long accused of being far-right and pro-Putin, win more than 20% of the country’s votes, taking home 152 seats in the Bundestag and making it the main opposition party, the first time a far-right party has ever held the position in Germany’s post-war history. 

Her party doubled its voteshare in just four years, having taken 10.4% of votes in 2021. The party dominated in east Germany, save for pockets of dissent in Berlin and Leipzig. 

Many of the Right’s leading figures, including Elon Musk and Hungary‘s Viktor Orban, went out of their way to congratulate Weidel and her party’s success in the latest election. 

Musk, who previously addressed AfD supporters and said the party was ‘the best hope for the future of Germany’, wrote on X: ‘Congratulations Alice Weidel! At this rate of growth, AfD will be the majority party by the next election.’

Weidel said she had woken up yesterday to find she had missed a call from Mr Musk, and said he had ‘personally congratulated me’. 

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s pro-Putin leader, congratulated Weidel in a post to X, writing: ‘The people of Germany voted for change in immense numbers. I want to congratulate Alice Weidel on doubling AfD’s share of the votes. Good luck and God bless Germany!’

Alice Weidel (pictured) claimed her party could ‘overtake the CDU [Christian Democratic Union] within the next few years for the next election’

Dr. Katrin Schreiter, Senior Lecturer in German and History at King’s College London, told MailOnline that despite AfD’s successes, it was unlikely that it will achieve more than this in the future.  

‘2025 might have seen the height of AfD success as this election played out on its core topic: migration. It’s unlikely that this will reoccur in the next elections. The firewall will hold as long as it is mathematically possible to build a functioning coalition government without the AfD. 

‘The CDU has already begun in January to angle for AfD voters by appealing to their anti-immigration stance through an eventually unsuccessful parliamentary initiative that would have taken back more control of German borders from the EU. 

‘Yet yesterday’s results show instead that the CDU lost voters to the AfD. Merz might take this as a lesson that fishing for votes on the right isn’t working.

‘German politics over the next few years will become stagnant, as many of the necessary reforms will need a two-third majority in parliament. In order to do that without the AfD, a CDU-led government would need to cooperate with the parties on the left of the political spectrum. That will make it hard to find a consensus.’  

She added that it was inappropriate for foreign nations like the US to have taken such a pivotal role in Germany’s elections. 

‘Any interference by a foreign government in national elections elsewhere is ethically questionable and politically unacceptable. After WWII, the US and Germany held a special relationship, which, despite growing criticism of and emancipation from the American ally since German reunification in 1990, has provided US politicians with a political platform in Germany. Merz is right in calling this out’,  Schreiter said. 

This year’s federal snap election, called by Scholz in November following an internal crisis over the country’s economic policies, saw the highest voter turnout in 40 years. 

Current Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Meanwhile, the governing centre-left SPD has slumped to third place in what looks set to be a disastrous result for Scholz’s party

The leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, waves a German flag at the party’s headquarters on Sunday. The party have taken 20 per cent which is the strongest showing for a far-right party in Germany’s post war era

Friedrich Merz from the Christian Democratic Union party

82.5% of Germans voted in the election, a strong rise from 76.6% in 2021. 

Dr Alex Clarkson, Lecturer in German and European & International Studies at King’s College London, said of the election: ‘While the mounting strategic chaos and hostility to the European Union in Washington through the Trump administration has generated shockwaves throughout the German political system, the main focus of German voters has remained on issues closer to home such as economic growth and migration. 

‘Even the blatant meddling in the election campaign in support of the Far Right AfD by senior figures in the Trump administration such as Elon Musk and JD Vance is not likely to have been central to the thinking of conservative or Far Right voters who are immersed in European political cultures often very different from the MAGA ideology of the US Republican Party.’

‘In a political environment in which the AfD is the largest right-wing alternative to the CDU, any failure by Merz to achieve policy successes that have tangible effects on everyday life could mean that the outcome of the February 2025 election may only sow the seeds of disaster the next time Germans go to the polls in 2029,’ he warned. 

While Friedrich Merz’s CDU comfortably won the contest, capturing 28.6% of votes and taking 208 seats, it faces an uphill battle to form a coalition government with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD).  

Senior SPD figures warned last night that the coalition talks would be difficult, with one describing the scale of their differences on economic policy as ‘incredible’.  

Klara Geywitz, the SPD deputy leader, said: ‘Friedrich Merz’s CDU has presented an election manifesto that would create additional billions in gaps in an already strained budget. 

‘In that respect we are at the beginning of a very difficult process, the outcome of which is still open, in my view.

‘You can see that there is quite obviously an incredible difference between the CDU’s manifesto, which promised massive tax cuts for high earners, and the current budget situation. And just talking about that is likely to be very complicated.’