section_path: History/Meuthen's leadership (2017–2022)
section_name: Meuthen's leadership (2017–2022)
paragraph_text: Meuthen's leadership (2017–2022)
  
  At the party conference in April 2017, Frauke Petry announced that she would not run as the party's main candidate for the 2017 federal election. This announcement grew out of internal power struggle as the party's support had fallen in polls from 15% in the summer of 2016 to 7% just before the conference. Björn Höcke from the far-right wing of the party and Petry were attempting to push each other out of the party. Petry's decision was partly seen as a step to avoid a vote at the conference on the issue of her standing. The party chose Alexander Gauland, a stark conservative who worked as an editor and was a former member of the CDU, to lead the party in the elections. Gauland supported the retention of Höcke's party membership. Alice Weidel, who is perceived as more moderate and neoliberal, was elected as his running mate. The party approved a platform that, according to The Wall Street Journal, "urges Germany to close its borders to asylum applicants, end sanctions on Russia and to leave the EU if Berlin fails to retrieve national sovereignty from Brussels, as well as to amend the country's constitution to allow people born to non-German parents to have their German citizenship revoked if they commit serious crimes."
  
  In the 2017 federal election AfD won 12.6% of the vote and received 94 seats; this was the first time it had won seats in the Bundestag. It won three constituency seats, which would have been enough to qualify for proportionally-elected seats in any event. Under a long-standing law intended to benefit regional parties, any party that wins at least three constituency seats qualifies for its share of proportionally-elected seats, regardless of vote share.
  
  At a press conference held by AfD the day after the 2017 federal election, Frauke Petry said that she would participate in the Bundestag as an independent; she said she did this because extremist statements by some members made it impossible for AfD to function as a constructive opposition, and to make clear to voters that there is internal dissent in the AfD. She also said that she would be leaving the party at some future date. Petry formed the Blue Party in September 2017. Four members of AfD in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania legislature, including Bernhard Wild, also left the party to form Citizens for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which folded in December 2018. On 6 November 2019 Petry announced that the Blue Party would dissolve by the end of the year.
  
  In 2018 André Poggenburg, AfD's regional leader of the eastern Saxony-Anhalt state, resigned his post after making racist remarks concerning Turks and immigrants with dual citizenship. In 2019, Poggenburg started a new far-right party, Aufbruch deutscher Patrioten – Mitteldeutschland (ADPM), which he left in August 2019 after his internal call to dissolve ADPM and to support AfD in the upcoming state elections of fall 2019 was denied.
  
  Ahead of the 2021 federal election, AfD campaigned with the slogan "Germany. But Normal" and took a position of opposing further lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Having moved further right on economic issues and remaining strongly right on socio-cultural issues, despite attempts to normalize, AfD's manifesto for the federal election was deemed to be still too radical for the party to take part in government.
  
  In the federal election, AfD saw a dip in national vote share by getting 10.3% of the vote, compared to 12.6% in 2017; however, the party emerged as the largest in the states of Saxony and Thuringia, and saw a strong performance in eastern Germany. The party's results drew a mixed analysis from AfD members and political commentators, the latter of whom attributed the slight decline to visible infighting, whereas AfD candidates such as Alice Weidel blamed media bias against the party. The political scientist Kai Arzheimer commented that the result "wasn't any appreciable increase, but it wasn't a disaster for them." Arzheimer also posited that the result demonstrated that AfD had firmly established itself in German national politics but had not reached beyond its core support. AfD's top candidates Tino Chrupalla and Weidel praised the result as "solid", while party spokesman Jörg Meuthen stated that the party should reevaluate the result and aim on "sending strong signals towards the center" to win back new voters. Meuthen left the party in January 2022.