Six candidates for Germany’s far-right AfD party have died in recent weeks ahead of local elections in the large western state of North Rhine Westphalia.
Police have said there is no suggestion of foul play at hand in the deaths, which have caused speculation among the party’s supporters on social media.
More than 20,000 candidates will run for office in the election on 14 September across the state, which has a population of 18 million.
Despite the police ruling out suspicious circumstances, retired economist Stefan Homburg claimed in a post on X that the number of candidates' deaths was "statistically almost impossible”. His post was later retweeted by the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel, while AfD supporter and billionaire Elon Musk responded to the tweet with an exclamation mark.
The state’s interior ministry has pointed out that candidates from other parties have passed away in the weeks leading up to the vote.
The AfD’s co-leader in North Rhine Westphalia, Kay Gottschalk, acknowledged the rumours on Tuesday, saying: "What I have in front of me is just partial information that doesn't back up these suspicions at the moment".
Mr Gottschalk told Politico’s Berlin Playbook Podcast that his party wanted the cases investigated, "without immediately getting into conspiracy-theory territory". He said the party had to deal with the situation carefully, out of respect for the family members of those who died.
German police told the DPA news agency that the deaths were either the result of natural causes or were not being revealed for privacy reasons.
The anti-migrant AfD has surged in recent years to become Germany’s main opposition, coming second place in the general election in February with 20.8 per cent of the vote.
The German domestic spy agency declared the party as “extremist” in May, which it based on a 1,100-page report. It was a move that has now allowed the agency to use secret methods to monitor the party, which include recruiting confidential informants and intercepting communications.
A high-profile member of the AfD, Björn Höcke, was convicted of using a Nazi slogan at an event last year.
In June, another report from the agency stated that the number of right-wing extremists in the party had increased by 77 per cent in 2025, reaching around 20,000 people.
The deaths of the candidates have meant new ballots must be drawn up and reprinted, and some postal voters will have to re-cast their vote.
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