As an openly gay politician who lives with her Sri Lanka-born partner in Switzerland, Alice Weidel was an unusual choice to many to lead Germany's far-right and anti-immigration AfD into Sunday's elections.

To her legions of political foes, Weidel serves as a "fig leaf" for a party that rails against asylum seekers, Islam and multiculturalism and some of whose top figures have voiced revisionist views on Germany's Nazi past.

On Sunday the 46-year-old, who says Margaret Thatcher is her political idol, looks set to propel the Moscow-friendly AfD to a record result, with polls predicting it will win second place at around 20 percent.

Ahead of the election, Weidel has basked in the vocal support of US President Donald Trump's key allies -- especially the tech billionaire Elon Musk -- as well as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Often sporting a pearl necklace and a trouser suit, she was the first AfD politician to be invited to a pre-election TV debate where she sparred with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his main rival, the conservative Friedrich Merz.

All of this has contributed to the "normalisation" of........

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