section_path: History/Lucke's leadership (2013–2015)
section_name: Lucke's leadership (2013–2015)
paragraph_text: Lucke's leadership (2013–2015)
  
  On 22 September 2013 AfD won 4.7% of the votes in the 2013 federal election, just missing the 5% barrier to enter the Bundestag. The party won about 2 million party list votes and 810,000 constituency votes, which was 1.9% of the total of these votes cast across Germany.
  
  AfD did not participate in the 2013 Bavaria state election held on 15 September. The party gained parliamentary representation for the first time in the state parliament of Hesse, with the defection of Jochen Paulus from the Free Democratic Party to AfD in early May 2013; he was not re-elected and left office in January 2014. In the 2013 Hesse state election held on 22 September, the same day as the 2013 federal election, AfD failed to gain representation with just 4% of the vote.
  
  In early 2014, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled the proposed 3% vote hurdle for representation in the European elections unconstitutional, and the 2014 European Parliament election became the first run in Germany without a barrier for representation.
  
  AfD held a party conference on 25 January 2014 at Frankenstolz Arena, Aschaffenburg, northwest Bavaria. The conference chose the slogan Mut zu Deutschland ("Courage for Germany") to replace the former slogan Mut zur Wahrheit (lit. ' Courage the truth ', or more succinctly, "Telling it as it is"), which prompted disagreement among the federal board that the party could be seen as too anti-European. A compromise was reached by using the slogan "MUT ZU D*EU*TSCHLAND", with the "EU" in "DEUTSCHLAND" encircled by the 12 stars of the European flag. The conference elected the top six candidates for the European elections on 26 January 2014 and met again the following weekend to choose the remaining euro candidates. Candidates from 7th–28th place on the party list were selected in Berlin on 1 February. Party chairman Bernd Lucke was elected as lead candidate.
  
  In February 2014, AfD officials said they had discussed alliances with the British anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), which Lucke and the federal board of AfD opposed, and also with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, to which Britain's Conservative Party belongs. In April 2014 Hans-Olaf Henkel, AfD's second candidate on the European election list, ruled out forming a group with UKIP. stating that he saw the Conservatives as the preferred partner in the European Parliament. On 10 May 2014 Lucke had been in talks with the Czech and Polish member parties of the ECR group.
  
  In the 2014 European Parliament election on 25 May, AfD came in fifth place in Germany, with 7.1% of the national vote (2,065,162 votes), and seven Members of the European parliament (MEPs). On 12 June 2014, it was announced that AfD had been accepted into the ECR group in the European Parliament. The official vote result was not released to the public, but figures of 29 votes for and 26 against were reported by the membership. The inclusion of AfD in the ECR group was said to have caused mild tensions between the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the British prime minister David Cameron.
  
  On 31 August AfD received 9.7% of the vote in the 2014 Saxony state election, winning 14 seats in the Landtag of Saxony. On 14 September, AfD obtained 10.6% of the vote in the 2014 Thuringian and 12.2% in the Brandenburg state election, winning 11 seats in both state parliaments.
  
  On 15 February 2015 AfD won 6.1% of the vote in the Hamburg state election, gaining the mandate for eight seats in the Hamburg Parliament, winning their first seats in a western German state. On 10 May 2015, AfD secured in the 5.5% of the vote in the 2015 Bremen state election gaining representation in their fifth state parliament on a 50% turnout.