The AfD has been stealing votes from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives since its founding in 2013, storming into the European Parliament and five state assemblies. It had risen as high as 9 percent in polls but has now slumped to 5 percent.
Largely to blame is an acrimonious rivalry between party founder Bernd Lucke, an economics professor who grew up in western Germany, and his once-close co-leader Frauke Petry, an entrepreneur from the east.
"The party has gone through a somewhat turbulent patch... and the members just want things to calm down again - they want an executive committee that works," Petry, 40, told Reuters.
While Lucke wants the party to focus on liberal economic policies, Petry and other leading members have drawn support from expressly right-wing voters by tackling concerns about immigration. The AfD had planned to hold a congress in mid-June.
Delegates were due to eliminate one of the three co-leader positions before going down to a single leader in December. Petry was expected to emerge victorious in a showdown with Lucke but the event was suddenly scrapped last week.
She says that was a "purely political decision" but Lucke said it had to be canceled due to irregularities in selecting some delegates.
Instead, the AfD has said it might now invite members to a congress in late June, which would likely improve 52-year-old Lucke's chances as he is considered more popular among grassroots supporters than among functionaries.
Lucke told Reuters he wants members to decide between him and Petry: "It's known that there's been a serious breakdown of trust between Ms. Petry and me so I don't think it would be wise if, when the Executive Committee is elected, we are both represented."
In a sign of the tensions within the AfD, Lucke created a group called "Weckruf 2015" (Wake up call 2015) to stop the AfD becoming a "radical, sectarian party of angry citizens" as he seeks to prevent moderates who are disturbed by the rise of the party's right-wing from quitting.
But its existence has angered other party members, including Petry, who says it is a party within the party and detrimental.
"The way Bernd Lucke has been acting in recent months... bears the hallmark of weak leadership overall and is polarizing members," she said, referring to cancelling the party congress.
She said party founders were not always best placed to take a party forward. AfD is not a euroskeptic party alone in its internal strife. In Britain, the UK Independence Party is also suffering from fierce infighting despite shooting into third place in terms of vote share in an election last month.
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
Hermann Binkert, head of INSA polling institute, said personal feuds and disputes over what the AfD stands for were taking their toll at a time when it could easily cash in on crises like Greece's debt woes and the debate about refugees.
"There are plenty of issues the AfD could be capitalizing on but it isn't managing to do that due to infighting," he said. Petry acknowledged the AfD needed to seize the moment to focus more on the Greek debt crisis that excites German voters.
"We need to take an aggressive approach in positioning ourselves on Greece and go into much more detail," she said. "The AfD would benefit politically if it finally started making itself heard on the issue of the euro zone crisis again."
Lucke said he and Petry had different views on how the party should be led and how to stop it fraying at the political margins. "Ms Petry thinks we should just turn a blind eye and take everyone along but I just think that's completely wrong."
Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin's Free University, said the AfD would probably survive but its two wings were not compatible and Petry's camp was likely to win. While Lucke is a "lone wolf with a few friends" who spends much of his time at the European Parliament, Petry has built up a well-organized network in Germany, Neugebauer said.
"What's certain is that they'll no longer work together and that means...people who have worked with them up until now will no longer do that either, so one wing will break away and the question is then who has the trademark rights for the name AfD?" That would no doubt please Merkel's conservatives, who have long been hoping for an implosion in the AfD.
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