> Interesting. I thought AfD is ahead in the polls and very pro-Russian, how do I reconcile these observations?

Germany is a multi-party system where no single party is expected to get an absolute majority.

AfD polling is around the 25% mark, which is about the same as the other highest contender, but the remaining 50% of the votes do actually count and get representation in government, they're not lost and forgotten, it's not winner-takes-all.

Many people vote for them out of protest against the establishment.

Also the typical AfD Voter doesn't like Trump or the US. Especially after they threatened some small port in Eastern Germany with sanctions over North Stream 2 (not that they liked them much before, but that fell on a very fertile soil)

AfD gets 30% of votes, the turnout isn't even 80% so even if we consider 100% of them are brain dead putin balls garglers, which isn't even remotely true, that's 14m people out of ~60m people legally allowed to vote.

These numbers look pretty similar to Trump's voter base in 2024. He got 49% of the vote from the 60% of the population that can vote, so about 30% of all possible votes.