The AfD is campaigning with the top duo of Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel.

In a membership decision, 71 percent spoke in favor of the party chairman and the parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, the AfD announced on Tuesday.

The duo of the Hessian member of the Bundestag Joana Cotar and the former Air Force General Joachim Wundrak received only 27 percent, two percent of the members rejected both duos.

48 percent of the approximately 30,000 AfD members took part in the vote.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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    The result in this clarity is a serious setback for the camp around co-party leader Jörg Meuthen, who stands for a more moderate line.

    Chrupalla, who comes from Saxony, and Weidel, on the other hand, receive support from the far right camp of the former "wing".

    True, both are far better known than Cotar and Wundrak.

    In the Meuthen camp, however, one had hoped for the members in the west, who are clearly in the majority.

    A victory was not necessarily expected, but with a result of around forty percent.

    Are you in agreement in the election campaign?

    When she was presented as the top candidate, Weidel said that the AfD could now “unite in the election campaign” and that the result was “across camps and currents”. Chrupalla saw the result as a “vote for the end of the directional debate in the party”. That should be wishful thinking. But obviously many members have attached little importance to the dispute over the direction.

    For Meuthen, who has a clear majority in the federal executive committee, the question now arises whether he can continue to exercise his influence. At the Dresden election party conference in April, he was defeated on crucial issues, the party opted for the more radical course, as advocated by the "wing" boss Björn Höcke. This includes, for example, the demand that Germany should leave the EU. Chrupalla said the EU could no longer be reformed. "You can't ride a dead horse forever," he remarked.

    Weidel said that the AfD's election campaign will focus on the “new social question”. In times of falling incidences and rapidly increasing vaccination numbers, the AfD wants to focus on the economic consequences of the pandemic. According to Weidel, “entire branches of industry are facing bankruptcy” due to the corona measures taken by the federal government. The dismantling of the energy industry and the auto industry resulted in a "migration of human capital" from Germany. Chrupalla, himself a master craftsman, said the middle class in Germany had "eroded". He is politically homeless, the AfD wants to give him a new home.

    Weidel revealed herself as a supporter of the conspiracy theory of the creation of a new world order. This conspiracy theory was formed around an initiative of the World Economic Forum called "The Great Upheaval". The initiative provides for a reorganization of the economy and society after the corona pandemic. Weidel said the extensive restrictions on freedom in the pandemic, decision-making bodies such as the Prime Minister's Conference and the new Infection Protection Act were "a threat to our democratic constitution".