section_path: History/Petry's leadership (2015–2017)
section_name: Petry's leadership (2015–2017)
paragraph_text: Petry's leadership (2015–2017)
  
  After months of factional infighting and a cancelled party gathering in June 2015, Frauke Petry was elected on 4 July 2015 as the de facto principal speaker of the party with 60% of the member votes ahead of Bernd Lucke at a party congress in Essen. Petry was a member of the national-conservative faction of AfD. Her leadership was widely seen as heralding a shift of the party to the right to focus more on issues such as immigration, Islam, and strengthening ties to Russia, a shift which was claimed by Lucke as turning the party into a " Pegida party". In the following week, five MEPs exited the party on 7 July, the only remaining MEPs being Beatrix von Storch and Marcus Pretzell, and Lucke announced on 8 July 2015 that he was resigning from AfD, citing the rise of xenophobic and pro-Russian sentiments in the party. At a meeting of members of the Wake-up call (Weckruf 2015) group on 19 July 2015, AfD founder Bernd Lucke and former AfD members announced they would form a new party, the Alliance for Progress and Renewal, under the founding principles of AfD. The split off party was eventually renamed the Liberal Conservative Reformers, but had little electoral success.
  
  In February 2016, AfD announced a cooperation pact with the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). On 8 March 2016, the bureau of the ECR group began motions to exclude AfD from their group due to its links with the far-right FPÖ, inviting the two remaining AfD MEPs to leave the group by 31 March, with a motion of exclusion to be tabled on 12 April if they refuse to leave voluntarily. While von Storch left the ECR group on 8 April to join the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group, Pretzell let himself be expelled on 12 April.
  
  With the European migrant crisis remaining the dominant national issue, elections on 13 March were held in the three states of Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Saxony-Anhalt, and saw the AfD receiving double-digit percentages of the vote in all three states. In the 2016 Saxony-Anhalt state election, AfD reached second place in the Landtag, receiving 24.2% of the vote. In the 2016 Baden-Württemberg state election, AfD achieved third place, with 15.1% of the vote. In the 2016 Rhineland-Palatinate state election, AfD again reached third place, with 12.6% of the vote. In Angela Merkel 's home state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, her CDU was beaten into third place following a strong showing of AfD, who contested at state level for the first time, to claim the second-highest polling with 20.8% of the vote in the 2016 state election. AfD voter support in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania appears to have come from both left-wing and right-wing parties, with support for the Social Democratic Party of Germany down 4.9%, CDU down 4.1%, The Left down 5.2%, Alliance '90/The Greens down 3.9%, and support for the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDP) halved, dropping to 3.0%. Rising support for AfD meant that The Greens and the NDP failed to reach the 5% threshold to qualify for seats in the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and consequently lost their seats. In the 2016 Berlin state election, which AfD also contested for the first time, the party achieved a vote of 14.2%, making them the fifth largest party represented in the state assembly. Their vote seems to have come equally from the SPD and CDU, whose votes declined 6.7% and 5.7%, respectively.
  
  At the party congress held on 30 April to 1 May 2016, AfD adopted a policy platform based upon opposition to Islam, calling for the ban of Islamic symbols including burqas, minarets, and adhan (call to prayer), using the slogan "Islam is not a part of Germany".