Overview
- At the party congress on Saturday, 600 AfD delegates re‑elected Alice Weidel with about 81% support and Tino Chrupalla with about 70%, while police escorted delegates into the venue to prevent planned blockades.
- Roughly 30,000 to 31,000 protesters gathered in Erfurt and staged blockades and sit‑ins that produced clashes with police but no widespread major incidents.
- Both co‑leaders framed the congress as a launchpad to win September regional elections and break the long‑standing cordon sanitaire that keeps mainstream parties from forming coalitions with the AfD.
- Polls reported during the weekend show the AfD leading in key eastern states with roughly 35–42% in Saxony‑Anhalt and Mecklenburg‑Vorpommern and around 29% at the federal level, boosting the party’s momentum.
- Federal and state domestic intelligence services are monitoring AfD activity over extremist links while the party balances senior figures who court radical voters, such as Björn Höcke, against leadership efforts to limit overtly extremist roles.