Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service coming live from

London this is Owen Bennett Jones so the exit polls say the far-right

alternative for Germany party is on track to win a state election for the first time.

The AFD founded in 2013 with an anti-migration and Eurosceptic agenda picked up the most votes in the eastern

state of Thuringia, according to that poll.

The party is on course for around 33.5 percent that compares with 23.4% last time round in 2019.

Well I have been speaking to Beatrix von Storch.

She used to be a member of the European Parliament, she is now in the Bundestag and she is

deputy leader of the AFD. So why does she think her party did so well in these elections?

This is a very big success. It's a huge success.

We are the dominant party. We are by foreign number one in Turringia and we are almost number one in Sonia.

We're 30% plus in both countries.

So it is probably very difficult to not have us govern the country if everything would work normal.

This is the biggest victory we ever had and the party of the Chancellor is down to one digit number so seven, eight percent or something.

So they are just in ruins and AFD is 30 percent plus.

It's a huge victory for AFD.

Yeah, now you said in normal circumstances,

you know, that would enable you to be part of a coalition that would govern,

but the other parties, you know, have very critical views of the AFD so that may not be possible I guess.

Yeah, this is true. I mean you have to have a majority and that means the majority in the parliament and we are by far the biggest party in

Turkey for at least but we don't have the majority so we need a partner and

and usually now it would be up to us to go and address this governing building talks and go towards the other parties.

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