Markus Frohnmaier had a clear idea of ​​how election evening would go. A “blue bar” would “shoot through the ceiling,” said the AfD candidate for Baden-Württemberg at his party’s election campaign conference last November. The “old parties,” Frohnmaier continued, would “experience their blue miracle.”

AfD gets 18.8 percent of the vote in Baden-Württemberg

According to the first calculations it is clear: this blue miracle did not happen and the ceilings remained undamaged. According to initial projections, the AfD will receive 18.8 percent of the vote in the state elections, making it the third strongest force and probably the strongest opposition party. A performance for which Frohnmaier was celebrated with chants shortly after 6 p.m.

And yes, in itself that is a scary good result. In the comparatively wealthy southwest, the AfD always had a difficult time; in the 2021 election it received 9.7 percent of the vote.

Are “unpleasant questions” now arising?

She almost doubled this result. The party could confidently chalk up the evening as another success and concentrate on the next state election in Rhineland-Palatinate on March 22nd.

But it’s not that simple. The pressure on Frohnmaier was already too great before the vote. “Anything other than an outstanding result for the AfD in Baden-Württemberg will raise many, sometimes very unpleasant, questions,” Torben Braga, a member of the Bundestag from Thuringia and a close confidant of the powerful state leader Björn Höcke, recently wrote on Platform X. A point of view that quite a few AfDers are likely to share.

Under your own claim

One reason for this is, first of all, your own demands. Since 2021, the force has finally become a self-declared people’s party. While it was just over ten percent in the federal election in the same year, according to surveys it is now on a par with the Union at around 25 percent.

At the same time, it has reliably established itself as the strongest force in some federal states. In Saxony-Anhalt, for example, where top candidate Ulrich Siegmund can even hope for a sole government in the September election, depending on the performance of the other parties. And Frohnmaier himself had also fueled expectations for Baden-Württemberg: he promised “25 percent plus X” for the election.

18.8 percent, third strongest force? For many in the party, this now feels like a defeat. An avoidable one at that.

Some party friends call Frohnmaier a “fighting dwarf”.

Frohnmaier seemed to have a plan, namely a kind of self-taming – of the party and himself. The 35-year-old with Romanian roots was long considered a keen representative of the most right-wing tendencies in the AfD. Some party friends call him “Battle Dwarf,” probably because of his stature, while others call him “Frontmaier.” It was barely ten years ago that he was still willing to be accompanied as he hung out with Martin Sellner, head of the “Identitarian Movement”.

He is a co-founder of the disbanded AfD youth organization Junge Alternative and was one of the first signatories of the “Erfurt Resolution”, the founding paper of the extreme right wing around Höcke. He, who is married to a Russian journalist, has repeatedly been criticized for his contacts with Russian politicians.

During the election campaign, however, Frohnmaier noticeably distanced himself from the extreme right in the AfD, for example avoiding joint appearances with wing colleague Höcke. On podiums and TV stages, he struggled to maintain a decidedly gentle tone despite the harshness of the content. The party must “make it as easy as possible for neighbors to choose the AfD,” he said.

Embroiled in scandals

In the end, however, he made it rather difficult for him – albeit for different reasons. Because Frohnmaier was basically irritating from the day he was set up. First of all, because it was always clear that his foray into state politics would be a short one.

Frohnmaier made it known early on that he would not run for the state parliament, but only for the office of Prime Minister. That’s why he gave himself the neologism “prime ministerial candidate” instead of the top candidate.

However, his party has always been far from a sole government in the southwest and no one wants to form a coalition with them. Frohnmaier will go back to Berlin after election evening. And thus give the impression that he only used his candidacy to boost his career there. After all, he, the close confidant of party leader Alice Weidel, is already parliamentary group vice-president and foreign policy spokesman. So he stirs with the big political spoon.

Frohnmaier traveled to the USA shortly before the election

On top of that, it became known in the last few meters of the election campaign that he, like so many in his party, was knee-deep in the nepotism affair. It recently emerged that not only is his wife employed by an AfD member of the Bundestag, but his father also works for his campaign manager, a member of the Bundestag from Baden-Württemberg.

Frohnmaier reacted to this with a reflex that has long been practiced in the AfD: the real scandal is that the media is reporting on it at all.

But then he also achieved the feat of spending election week not in Baden-Württemberg, but in Washington DC, where he networked with figures from Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

Still above water

Weidel and co-boss Tino Chrupalla are said to have been less than enthusiastic that their candidate preferred the wide world to the countryside at this point. When they stood alone on stage at the official end of the election campaign in Rottweil on Thursday, both punished Frohnmaier by consistently not mentioning him. A joint appearance on Monday was canceled without giving any reason.

That doesn’t sound like the usual flowers and congratulations – it sounds like trouble.

Nevertheless, the AfD is likely to come out of election evening with a head start. In the end you will most likely become the strongest opposition force. And isn’t it even a good sign for the party that this value was achieved under the storm cloud of a nationwide scandal by a candidate with potential for improvement?

In fact, despite the recent scandals, there were hardly any downward swings for the party in surveys; it remained solidly between 15 and 20 percent – and the election results confirm this. With a view to the super election year of 2026, this is important reassurance for the AfD.

The result shows how stable the AfD electorate is now, which basically supports the party regardless of the specifics. According to the findings, AfD scandals do not seem to alienate the party’s clientele – but rather confirm their perception of the world.