With 53.45 percent, the AfD party congress in Riesa on Saturday confirmed the incumbent chairman Tino Chrupalla in office for the next two years.

The Saxon politician had led the party alone since the departure of former co-boss Jörg Meuthen.

He was challenged by Norbert Kleinwaechter, member of the Bundestag from Brandenburg.

The party congress had previously decided that two co-chairs should continue to head the AfD for the next two years.

That was decided by the delegates on Saturday at a federal party conference in Riesa, Saxony, with a clear majority.

The party congress had changed the statutes of the AfD on Friday so that in the future either a dual leadership or a single leadership is possible.

So far, the party's rules have provided for two or three chairmen.

The AfD MEP Nicolaus Fest had applied as a possible co-chair.

Alice Weidel, who already leads the parliamentary group with Chrupalla, announced on Friday evening that she would run for this post in the event of a dual leadership.

Dirk Spaniel, among others, had positioned himself against the double leadership.

The Baden-Württemberg member of the Bundestag is one of Weidel's critics.

He said: "Responsibility is not divisible."

The AfD has lost votes in all nine state elections since the beginning of 2020, and in Schleswig-Holstein it was recently kicked out of the state parliament.

It also did worse than before in the federal elections last September.

On Friday, the party voted with a good 69 percent of the delegates for the change in the statutes of the federal leadership, which had been introduced by Thuringia's state chairman Björn Höcke, among others.

Höcke, who is located on the extreme right in the AfD, had pleaded in principle for a single leader in the justification for his application.

Dual leadership are "prone to conflict".

In view of the notorious disputes at the top of the party, however, Höcke campaigned for Riesa to once again refrain from electing just one "federal spokesman".

The new federal board must first show that harmonious cooperation is possible before the possibility of individual leadership is used.