One in five voters in the German election favored the far right. The AfD leader’s dramatic rise terrifies many of the others.

Gemany's far-right AFD leader Alice Weidel enjoyed the vocal support of US President Donald Trump's main allies ahead of the election. The leader has an atypical profile for a far right, anti-immigration party.

The leading candidate, Friedrich Merz, a conservative who has adopted many of the AfD’s hard-line positions on immigration, used his closing statement of the debate to promise his voters that he would never allow the AfD into his government. Under him, he said, the firewall would hold.

As an openly gay politician who lives with her Sri Lanka-born partner in Switzerland, Alice Weidel was an unusual choice to many to lead Germany's far-right and anti-immigration AfD into

CDU leader Friedrich Merz has ruled out any such alliance but caused uproar last month by bringing a motion to parliament that was passed with AfD votes, breaching a long-standing taboo.

As Dr Weidel took the stage in Halle, the crowd started a chant that was a not-too-subtle play on a Nazi slogan, “Everything for Germany,” a phrase once carved on the knives of Nazi storm troopers. It is banned in Germany.

In a relationship with a woman of foreign origin, the AfD leader nonetheless assumes an anti-immigration rhetoric and unabashedly makes references to the Third Reich. This position has earned her the endorsement of Elon Musk and US Vice President JD Vance,

Alice Weidel, has vowed to "chase" the country's other parties if her party goes into opposition. The CDU/CSU centre-right bloc is leading according to initial projects, and its leader Friedrich Merz has repeatedly ruled out a coalition with the AfD.