Who Really Makes Up the AfD Party in Germany?

So let's have a chat over the anti-immigration party of Germany (the AfD Party).

To start with, they didn't exist until the fall of 2013 when a couple of lawyers got together and started a political party based on being anti-Euro (I know, it sounds hokey).  They felt that they could draw votes and survive as a small party (maybe hopes of just getting five-percent). 

In the first two years, they surprised folks with state election wins of five to nine percent. 

Then in the summer of 2015....a group came along to become members of the party, then they met at the national meeting and said they wanted to go anti-migrant/anti-immigrant.  The head of the party....Bernd Lucke.....said 'no', then gets dumped.  With him leaving, some will suggest that 15-percent of the membership left, and it became a totally different party.

It is a rag-tag group that is the official party itself.  Some were cast-off from other parties.  Some are extreme right-wing.  Some might come near to being Nazi-like.  Some seem fairly clever and smart.  Some are idiots. 

So you turn to who is voting for the AfD and it's a wide spectrum of folks who simply want a message to send Chancellor Merkel and the other political parties.  They refuse to bulge and view the AfD as strictly right-wing extremists and people can't be that 'STUPID' (journalists have actually suggested this openly). 

There is no doubt that the AfD will continue to get votes (right now, it's gauged to be near 17-percent in national polls).  By spring of 2019, I expect them to be near 15-percent. 

The message crowd?  They don't care about the Trump-like label (Merkel even hinted that theme in the last month).  They don't care about the Nazi-like theme that the journalists have put onto the AfD.  They don't care about the extremist theme.  It's all about a message. 

Where this will end up?  I expect the AfD to take 20 to 30 percent of the votes in the three German state elections of 2019.  I expect them to get between 15 and 20 percent for the EU election in June of 2019.  As you get into 2020?  The AfD likely will be nearing 25-percent of the national vote.  At any point, Merkel and the others could react and find some way to appease the anti-migrant crowd, but I have my doubts that they want to be seen as lessening their position. 

So to sum it up.....there's really two groups here.  One are the actual members of the AfD Party, and the others are the voters who need it to send a message to Berlin.  These two groups would probably never socialize or have a drink with each other, but in this case....they accidentally met up at an opportune time and things have worked out.