On 23 February, Germany will vote to decide who will run their next federal government. There’s five candidates running to be chancellor – the frontrunner is Friedrich Mertz from the Christian Democrat party. In Germany, a single party rarely wins the majority of seats in the Bundestag, meaning coalition governments often form.

The leader of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, expressed his shock, telling the Welt newspaper: “Although this result was to be expected, according to the polls, I am also shocked this evening by the electoral success of the AfD, which has doubled its share of the vote in just three years.”