Musk won AfD a massive new audience, and JD Vance added support. That brought the party outsized attention, but the impact in Germany was limited, data shows.

STORY: While Elon Musk is playing a central role in the U.S. government as head of President Donald Trump's task force to slash government spending, the world’s richest person has also weighed in prominently on politics in Germany.

When it comes to courting controversy, there are few political rivals to Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). A former spokesman identified himself as a “fascist” in 2020, and later the same year talked nonchalantly about how refugees could be “shot or gassed” as he discussed how more migrants coming in would translate into polling gains for the AfD (“the worse it goes for Germany,