Another candidate of the right-wing anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has died unexpectedly ahead of the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), marking the fourth such case nationwide in recent months.
As German outlet WDR reported, AfD’s direct candidate for the council in Blomberg, 66-year-old Ralph Lange, died on 28 August. His death automatically rendered invalid polling cards and postal ballot documents already sent out, putting pressure on the city administration to reprint and resend them in time. Following a decision by the city council, the election in Blomberg will proceed as a by-election on the planned date of 14 September 2025.
Lange’s case is not the only one tied to the NRW local elections. Stefan Berendes, the AfD’s candidate for the city council in Bad Lippspringe, also died unexpectedly, triggering the same administrative procedures as in Blomberg. In both cases, AfD must now decide whether to nominate successors to the deceased candidates.
Similarly, AfD candidates in Schwerte and Rheinberg passed away just days before scheduled elections. In total, four such cases have occurred in a very short period in the run-up to the NRW local elections. German economist Stefan Homburg called the coincidence ‘statistically almost impossible’ in a post on X. His comment was even picked up by US billionaire Elon Musk, who is known for his sympathy toward AfD’s cause and has repeatedly been accused by the Western mainstream of interfering in German politics in support of the party.
Just yesterday, on 31 August, Musk posted about another German local election, this time in Cologne, writing that ‘either Germany votes AfD or it is the end of Germany’—a statement strikingly similar to those that drew criticism from the mainstream in late 2024 and early 2025. Musk was reacting to news that in Cologne, all parties except AfD had agreed to highlight only the positive aspects of migration from the developing world during the campaign.
AfD is currently the largest party in Germany, leading the governing Christian Democratic Union by two percentage points in the most recent polls.
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