Germany’s right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland party, or AfD, won a stunning gain in Sunday’s election — capturing an estimated one in five votes across the European Union’s largest country. 

But, the anti-immigrant, pro-Russia party is still likely to be frozen out of the government — after the right-of-center CDU/CSU parties claimed the biggest share of the vote.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz has the best shot at becoming Germany’s next chancellor —  but he has vowed he would not work with AfD to form a government in the German Bundestag.

As polls closed at noon on Sunday, the AfD — which has received the public backing of MAGA figures including Elon Musk and JD Vance — looked set to finish second in the overall results, with 20.2% following widespread fury in Germany over immigration and persistent economic recession.

As polls closed at noon on Sunday, the AfD — which has received the public backing of MAGA figures including Elon Musk and JD Vance — looked set to finish second in the overall results, with 20.2% following widespread fury in Germany over immigration and persistent economic recession.

The conservative CDU/CSU voting bloc with 28.8% came first after it adopted some of AfD’s anti-immigrant policies.

Speaking after the exit poll was announced, the AfD’s leader, Alice Weidel, told cheering supporters the movement was now a “mainstream” party.

“Our hand remains outstretched to form a government,” Weidel told supporters, adding that if the conservatives ignored the will of the people by refusing to enter a coalition with them, the AfD would be the biggest party next time around.

“We have never been stronger — we are the second biggest force,” Weidel said at the event in Berlin, as party activists waved German flags.

Merz has looked to move the CDU to the right on issues such as immigration, breaking away from the centrism of the party’s long-standing former leader Angela Merkel —  who welcomed in the waves of refugees who are now causing mass political upheaval.

“I want to do politics so that a party like the AfD is no longer needed in Germany,” Merz told supporters at an event in January.

AfD’s result represents a 9.8% increase on the last election results and would push the ruling left-wing SDP into third with just 16% of the vote, the worst numbers for the party since even before the Second Wold War on the rise of Nazism.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has held the role since 2021 after replacing Merkel, narrowly outperformed the Green Party after shedding more than a third of his party’s votes since the last election.

Addressing supporters in Berlin, Scholz described the election as “a bitter result,” adding that he took “responsibility” for the SDP’s worst result in modern history.

Merz previously blamed Scholz and his coalition partners for creating the conditions that boosted support for the AfD.

Under Germany’s complicated electoral system, the center-right Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) will be asked to form a coalition government.

The party had previously said it would not join with AfD over the latter’s controversial policies and past statements. The AfD has called for mass deportation of immigrants, as well as a rejection of green transition policies and the reintroduction of Germany’s former Deutsche Mark currency. Past leaders have also advocated for loosening Germany’s strict free speech laws — which criminalize Holocaust denial and Nazi rhetoric.

The AfD has also voted for bans on using gender-neutral language in schools, with Weidel saying in a 2023 interview with German public broadcaster ARD, “The trans pop culture of a minority is being promoted while parents ask themselves how to protect children from it in kindergartens and schools.”

However, in a recent speech delivered in Munich, JD Vance warned mainstream parties not to put up “firewalls” against cooperating with parties such as the AfD.

Musk has posted about the AfD more than 70 times on his X account, describing it as “the last spark of hope for Germany.”

President Trump took to his Truth Social following the exit poll. Although he didn’t mention any party by name, he described the election as “a great day for Germany,” on his account.

“Much like the USA, the people of Germany got tired of the no common sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration, that has prevailed for so many years,” he wrote.

Ten years on from Berlin’s “Refugees Welcome” message in 2015, when a record 2.1 million people immigrated to Germany under the leadership of Merkel, public attitudes toward the issue have hardened.

Just under half of all asylum seekers in the European Union in the past decade have been taken in by Germany, and a series of high-profile fatal attacks reportedly carried out by immigrants have fueled support for the AfD.

In the most recent case, an Afghan man attacked a kindergarten group, leaving two dead including a 2-year-old boy, in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg.

The AfD has also benefited from Germany’s sputtering economy and voter fatigue over the ongoing war in Ukraine to strengthen its support, much of it in the former East Germany that was once a Soviet puppet state.

But the party has been accused by critics of having ties to neo-Nazis and other extremist movements, with Björn Höcke, the AfD’s co-leader in the state of Thuringia, having past convictions for using Nazi rhetoric and symbols, which is banned in Germany.

The German domestic intelligence agency placed the AfD under surveillance in 2021, and three of the party’s state-level organizations are being considered as confirmed extremist groups.

Weidel — a lesbian who is in a relationship with a Sri Lankan-born immigrant woman — has looked to distance the party from some of its associations with violent thuggery.

The 46-year-old, who is raising two sons, has refused to be called queer, and described the legalization of same-sex marriage in Germany in 2017 as a “trivial” matter compared to issues such as mass migration.