Alice Weidel, missed a late-night congratulatory call from American billionaire Elon Musk following her party's success in the Bundestag elections. When she checked her phone in the morning, she saw "missed calls in the night from the United States.

The leading candidate, Friedrich Merz, a conservative who has adopted many of the AfD’s hard-line positions on immigration, used his closing statement of the debate to promise his voters that he would never allow the AfD into his government. Under him, he said, the firewall would hold.

The leader of the party said she received the call after the party known as the AfD finished second in national elections, by far the best showing in its history.