Germany's far-right AfD suffers series of candidate deaths ahead of local vote

[jfengel]

The first confounding factor that occurs to me: were they especially old?

Politicians tend to be on the elderly side. Even more so for conservative politicians, I think, but I don't know much about AfD.

If so, perhaps it's not quite as unlikely as the economist (quoted in TFA) thinks. But that's just speculation.

[the-dude]

The article reads 6 deaths, today another died, so the tally is now 7.

I thought HN might be a good place to discuss the odds of this.

[duxup]

This is one of those cases where how you frame the math either makes it seem more unlikely or just how the RNG of life played out.

>North Rhine-Westphalia has a population of 18 million and a reported 20,000 candidates will run for office in its 14 September local elections.

Personally I'm very much not a fan of knowing no facts about the deaths and jumping to conspiracy theories.

This is one of those litmus tests to see how conspiracy theory prone you are I think.

[pavel_lishin]

> the four initial deaths were either from natural causes or the cause was not being divulged for reasons of family privacy

Isn't the latter case usually reserved for suicides or drug overdoses, or other deaths that might be considered embarassing?

[the-dude]

For now, all deaths are from AfD, so wouldn't it be more fair to only consider AfD candidates?