Bernd Lucke

Hmm.

So Bernd Lucke was an, I believe, economics professor.

He eventually left the party because he saw it move towards the extreme.

Then the next person that inherited it, Mrs. Pauly, also left the party because of extremism.

even for her party.

And the other thing that you had said to me is that these, the leadership in these eastern states of the AFD are even to the right within the AFD setup.

Yes.

So they are the most extreme bits even within that party.

... has so far held up-

Ish

... with other parties saying they won't do a deal at a kind of leadership level although there are noises of-

Mm-hmm

Well, here the East German story plays a major role.

Uh, the AfD was formed actually as an anti-EU party, anti-Euro party by a professor named Bernd Lucke.

You don't have to remember the name.

Uh, like David said, back in the days, uh, of, uh, Angela Merkel.

And now that it's become apparent that Germany-wide the AFD is leading, I think for the first time, people are really beginning to engage with the topics that have led to this, so now they're trying to address these and that's, I would say, top is the economy and then closely followed by migration and that's why we are seeing particularly the centre-right but also the centre-left SPD party now trying to respond to those issues rather than just wondering what's wrong with the voters themselves.

And we've heard a bit about the AFD's policies, but some of the comments made by their leaders and politicians have attracted controversy too.

Can you tell me a bit about that?

Yes, the language in particular is very stark when you look into the manifesto that they've given out for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the selection is on Sunday.

He is very different to what this region will have seen before.

Yeah, I think he's also very different to what Germany has seen before.

This was one of the things in the AFD in the past, they just didn't have any charismatic leaders.

So the popularity ratings for the individual politicians were always lower than the party itself.