Seven AfD Candidates Die Before German Local Elections Amid Rising Political Violence (Worthy News Investigation)

by Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief

BERLIN/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – As many as seven candidates for Germany’s anti-migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have died in recent weeks ahead of local elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, prompting calls for investigation.

Police said “there is no evidence of foul play,” but AfD co-leader Alice Weidel reposted a social media comment suggesting at least four of the deaths were “statistically almost impossible.”

The state’s election commission confirmed that four primary candidates and three reserve candidates died, forcing new ballots to be printed and some postal voters to recast their ballots.

Causes of death included natural illness, pre-existing conditions, and one suicide, officials said. With some 20,000 people running in the September 14 elections, authorities stressed the number of deaths remains within statistical expectations.

North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior ministry noted that candidates from other parties, including the Greens and Social Democrats, had also died in recent weeks.

AfD state vice-chair Kay Gottschalk urged a “fact-based approach” and said the incidents should be investigated “without immediately getting into conspiracy theory territory.”

PATTERN OF VIOLENCE

The deaths come as AfD figures continue to face violent attacks in Germany. In June 2024, AfD candidate Heinrich Koch was stabbed with a boxcutter in the city of Mannheim after confronting someone tearing down his posters. He survived, and the attacker was admitted to psychiatric care.

Other AfD members have also been assaulted in recent years. In Bremen in 2019, Bundestag member Frank Magnitz was beaten unconscious by masked assailants. AfD co-founder Bernd Lucke was pepper-sprayed during a campaign event in 2013.

Party co-leader Tino Chrupalla has twice been targeted—his car was torched in 2020, and in 2023 he was hospitalized after what police treated as a possible syringe attack.

There were 2,790 attacks on elected representatives in 2023, according to Bundestag data. The Greens were targeted in 1,219 cases, AfD politicians in 478, and Social Democrats in 420.

The climate of violence has highlighted the AfD’s central campaign message: opposition to immigration.

The party rose to prominence after Germany accepted more than a million asylum seekers from mainly Muslim nations in 2015–2016 under then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, who declared, “Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”).

ISLAMIZATION WARNING

The AfD warns of what it calls the “Islamization” of Germany, demanding bans on minarets and burqas, rejecting multiculturalism, and promoting “traditional family structures and Christian heritage.”

It cites rising crime, including attacks against women, and calls for tighter border controls and fewer incentives for migrants, arguing that Europe’s largest economy cannot sustain current levels of arrivals.

Critics accuse the AfD of stoking xenophobia and undermining democratic institutions.

Yet polls suggest the party continues to gain ground, particularly in eastern states, as concerns over migration and political violence dominate the campaign season.

The AfD has also received moral support from members of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s administration.

At Germany’s annual Munich Security Conference this year, U.S. Vice President JD Vance denounced Germany’s “firewall” policy—the political consensus to reject cooperation with the AfD.

‘SACRED PRINCIPLE’

Vance argued that “Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls.”

The remarks were interpreted by observers as a call to end the ostracism of the AfD in German politics. He also referred to a move by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) to classify the AfD as a “confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor.”

On social media, Vance wrote that the AfD was “the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.”

He added, “The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt—not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.”

The AfD supports policies of Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, seen as one of Europe’s most vocal anti-migrant leaders, who maintains close ties with Trump.

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