Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel celebrate AfD's Bundestag breakthrough in Sunday's election | John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images German far right will ‘hunt’ Merkel from new perch in parliament The far-right party gets into the national parliament for the first time.

BERLIN — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will use its new powers as a parliamentary party to hold Angela Merkel's next government to account for its refugee policies, party leaders said after their Bundestag breakthrough in Sunday's election.

"Dear friends, now that we’re obviously the third biggest power … the government has to buckle up. We will hunt them. We will hunt Frau Merkel … and we will reclaim our country and our people,” one of its two leading candidates, Alexander Gauland, told cheering supporters in Berlin.

Poaching more than a million votes from Chancellor Merkel's conservatives, half a million from her main Social Democrat (SPD) allies and hundreds of thousands more from the far-left Die Linke, the anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic AfD finished third on just over 13 percent, according to the latest projections.

That means the AfD is on course to enter the lower house of Germany's parliament for the first time, following a series of strong showings in regional elections.

Thanks largely to the AfD, Merkel’s conservatives and the SPD both performed so much worse than expected in Sunday's general election that they won't be repeating their "grand coalition" government. That means the SPD will be the leading opposition force rather than the far-right newcomers, cushioning the blow a little for the German political establishment.

AfD party members and supporters reacted with cheers at their campaign headquarters in a trendy nightclub on Alexanderplatz in Berlin. About a thousand protesters rallied outside the nightclub shouting anti-racist chants and waving banners with slogans like "Xenophia isn't an option," and AfD leaders were forced to leave by a back door.

“We want to be a hard opposition … an opposition that Germany hasn’t had so far" — Jörg Meuthen

Founded as a Euroskeptic protest party during the eurozone debt crisis, the AfD lurched to the right during the refugee crisis of 2015 and is held together by its opposition to Angela Merkel’s policy on refugees and lingering opposition to eurozone policies, but inside the party there are wide differences on policy, strategy and how hard a line to take.

Party leaders lined up on German TV as the results came in on Sunday attempting to correct their image as racist rabble-rousers.

Party leader Frauke Petry, who was prevented from being the lead candidate by an internal revolt, said when asked about Gauland's remarks that she was “personally standing for a moderate course within the party.” She said the AfD should not be blamed for a more widespread "roughening of the tone" in German politics.

"It’s not fair to blame the AfD for that," said Petry.

AfD politician Jörg Meuthen was put forward to debate with Merkel, the SPD's Schulz and the other top candidates on Sunday evening, in a German election-night tradition known as the "Elephants' Roundtable." Meuthen said the new parliamentary AfD “will not tolerate xenophobia.”

“We want to be a hard opposition … an opposition that Germany hasn't had so far,” he said.

“The establishment thought the refugee topic was dead. But it’s not dead" — Armin-Paul Hampel

Alice Weidel, who co-led the AfD ticket with Gauland, said the pair of them wanted to use their new positions in the Bundestag to “initiate a committee of inquiry on Angela Merkel” and her decision to let in refugees.

“We have come to stay,” Weidel said.

Armin-Paul Hampel, a member of the AfD’s leadership, told POLITICO he believed that “Gauland was right” to say he would persecute Merkel, because the government needed what he called a “real opposition,” especially on the issue of migration.

“The establishment thought the refugee topic was dead. But it’s not dead,” he said.

Kalina Oroschakoff in Brussels contributed to this article.