Agreement with Tino Chrupalla
Alice Weidel becomes the AfD’s first candidate for chancellor
September 27, 2024, 4:50 p.m
The AfD is strong in polls nationwide, but it has no chance of becoming chancellor. Nevertheless, the party will send a candidate into the race for the first time: Alice Weidel.
According to information from the Editorial Network Germany (RND), AfD leader Alice Weidel is set to become her party’s candidate for chancellor in the 2025 federal election. Weidel and her co-chair Tino Chrupalla are said to have agreed on this in a conversation this week. At the beginning of December, the federal executive board and the party’s federal-state conference are scheduled to vote on the personnel. The party convention follows in January. In March of next year, the 45-year-old will be officially elected by the delegates at the AfD’s federal party conference.
As several AfD state chairmen confirmed to the RND, Chrupalla is said to have renounced his own ambitions in favor of his co-party leader. However, the two agreed that they wanted to contest the federal election campaign of the partly right-wing extremist party together. Chrupalla’s decision was noted with respect, reports the RND. In recent years, the Saxon had also built up a basis of trust and power in West German regional associations.
The 49-year-old master painter from Lusatia and the economist, whose family lives in Switzerland, have led the AfD parliamentary group together since 2021 and the party together since 2022. The AfD would nominate a candidate for chancellor for the first time in the 2025 federal election. So far, top candidates in a duo had led the party into the election campaigns. In 2017 it was Weidel and Alexander Gauland, in 2021 it was Weidel and Chrupalla.