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AfD forecast to win 20% of the vote

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Other parties have pledged not to work with it

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Wants to disband EU, drop support for Ukraine

By Thomas Escritt

BERLIN, Feb 23 (Reuters) - For the first time since the

Second World War, a far-right party has come second in a German

national election, a result that will keep it outside government

but make it a fearsome opponent of the ruling parties.

The Alternative for Germany, which has morphed since it was

founded in 2013 from a party of libertarian economists to an

anti-immigration, pro-Russia group, is forecast to have won the

backing of one-in-five Germans.

The AfD has little chance of joining the government as the

other parties maintain a "fire wall" to keep it out of office,

but leader Alice Weidel implied in her victory speech that it

was only a matter of time before that changed.

"Our hand remains outstretched to form a government," she

told supporters, adding that it would be tantamount to

"electoral fraud" if the first-placed conservatives chose to

govern with left-wing parties rather than them.

If that happened, she said, "next time we'll come first."

Weidel, the leader of a nativist party that preaches

traditional family values while raising her children with a

Swiss-based woman of Sri Lankan background, said the AfD was now

"a mainstream party".

Once internationally isolated, it now has an ally in the

White House, where Donald Trump's adviser Elon Musk, the world's

richest person, regularly posts his support.

"It's the most amazing feeling. I've been here since its

founding and to see it on 20% is amazing. We'll be kept out of

coalition, but as you can see, the conservatives are taking all

of our positions," said Gilbert Kalb, an AfD member celebrating

at the party's headquarters.

If cheers were slightly muted, that was because, although

its vote share doubled since 2021, the result fell short of the

more optimistic expectations.

Traditionally a pensioners' party, the AfD made inroads

among the young, many of whom have experienced years of sluggish

economic growth. Exit poll data indicated 22% of

25-to-34-year-olds voted for the party, compared to 10% of those

aged 70 and over.

Ahead of the result, young men in close-fitting suits milled

around at the headquarters, drinking beer and eating bratwurst.

The AfD has undergone successive waves of radicalisation

since its founding and is today under surveillance by security

services as an anti-democratic threat to Germany's

constitutional order.

Policies include drastically restricting migration,

disbanding the European Union and dropping support for Ukraine

in its war with Russia.

One leading figure is regional boss Bjoern Hoecke, twice

convicted for shouting slogans of Adolf Hitler's Nazis. Honorary

chairman Alexander Gauland has described the Nazis' genocide of

Europe's Jews as a lone stain that could not disfigure the

glorious sweep of German history.

It became the largest party in Hoecke's home state of

Thuringia last year, and did sufficiently well elsewhere that

only improbable and tricky coalitions of centre-right and far

left could keep them out of office.

Even outside government it reshaped debate away from the

"welcome culture" under which former Chancellor Angela Merkel

let a million refugees settle in 2015, with all mainstream

parties now pledging to tighten immigration controls.

STILL ISOLATED?

Forecasts suggest it will have 23% of seats in parliament,

just under the number needed to set up parliamentary committees

of inquiry that can summon witnesses and set the news agenda.

In a sign of quite how far outside Europe's mainstream it

is, other far right parties, including Marine Le Pen's National

Rally, have refused to work with a party that reminds many

Europeans of Germany's Nazi past.

Some legislators nurture close ties with Russia and China:

one European Parliament member, Petr Bystron is under

investigation for taking payment from a Russian-backed

disinformation outlet. Another, Maximilian Krah, was suspended

after prosecutors said one of his assistants was spying for

China.

There are still formidable barriers in its way: its

headquarters, next to an African restaurant on a side street in

a distant suburb, is far removed from the other parties'

imposing central offices because the stigma surrounding the

party is so great that no landlord agreed to let to them.

But there are signs its political isolation is crumbling:

Weidel received an invitation to Budapest to see Viktor Orban,

who praised her as a "brave woman" after she lambasted a

journalist for describing her party as far-right.

Other populists such as Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo

Salvini and Dutch anti-Islam nationalist Geert Wilders offered

congratulations on Sunday.

A year ago, the party seemed to be at a low ebb, buffeted by

revelations by investigative journalists that several of its

most senior members had met at a secret conference outside

Berlin to discuss "remigration" - the deportation of non-ethnic

German holders of German citizenship.

Nationwide protests followed, and the party briefly slipped

in polls, but with the economy in crisis and a population

disconcerted by war, it scored record results in four successive

regional elections in the autumn.

The president of Germany's Central Jewish Council, Josef

Schuster, told Welt newspaper he was shocked at the strength of

the AfD's result.

"This should worry all of us, that a fifth of German voters

have voted for a party that in at least some of its policies is

far-right, and which in its language and ideology seeks clear

links with the radical right and neo-Nazism ...," he said.