The AfD is drafted in Bavaria for the first time in the state parliament. So far everything went according to the expectations of the AfD leadership. But the election result of 10.2 percent (extrapolation of 22:47 clock) is then under their lofty goals.
Even in the summer, when AfD party leader Alexander Gauland appeared at the party convention of the Bavarian AfD, the party in the Free State was in polls at 13.5 percent. Now it fell on election Sunday despite a high turnout even under the Bavarian Bundestag result of 12.4 percent. Nothing to talk bad, was apparently the motto of the AfD on election Sunday. "I think it's a very good result," said Gauland in the ARD studio in Berlin.
As the reason for the comparatively subdued result Gauland made the competition of the "free voters". They are like the AfD "against mass immigration and against the euro." The Bavarian AFD country chief Martin Sichert was in a good mood. One must "not talk small" and "not ashamed" of the numbers, it was finally the best result of the AfD for two years in state elections, said the member of the Bundestag.
On a top candidate was waived
In fact, the performance of the Bavarian spin-off should leave the AFD leadership far less worried than the question of how party colleagues sort themselves on the ground in the coming days and weeks. Because the AfD in Bavaria is deeply divided, they even waived the establishment of a top candidate. Instead, in the seven administrative districts seven AFD top candidates for the state parliament.
One of them is the Upper Bavarian AfD-list leader Franz Bergmüller, who once traded with the CSU and later with the "Free Voters". A lawsuit by the AfD federal executive is still pending in court against him. In the first instance Bergmüller had achieved in the summer before the district court Berlin a success - against the AfD Federal Board, which complains that Bergmüller 2013 was at times simultaneously a member of the AfD and the "Free Voters". Recently it became known that the AfD Federal Board
DPA
Katrin Ebner-Steiner (left) and Alice Weidel in Mamming
Appeal against the judgment.
In the AfD federal leadership was already before the Bayern election to worry about a future AFD group in Bavaria could split soon - in a wing around Bergmüller and one to the Lower Bavarian AfD-leading candidate Katrin Ebner-Steiner. The 40-year-old, who also appeared again on Sunday in the dirndl, had appeared in the election campaign with the Thuringian AfD country chief and right winger Björn Höcke. Her disappointment at the performance of her party was seen by Ebner-Steiner on Sunday at her election party in Mamming. That no better result was achieved, "certainly also on the hate of the old parties, especially the CSU," she said in the TV cameras.
The fact that Bergmüller and Ebner-Steiner did not organize a joint election party showed just how divided the party is. Bergmüller celebrated with his followers - internally called the Leberkäs Connection - in Rosenheim. By contrast, the co-chair of the AFD parliamentary group, Alice Weidel, appeared at Ebner-Steiner's party in Mamming - also a sign of the federal party.