Polling for the federal elections to choose the next German government in less than a month have seen some dramatic shifts, with the governing left-globalists experiencing a “statistically significant decline” in the past week, and the sovereigntist-right picking up more support.
Immigration is the key policy area for German voters, polling shows, as voting intention results show the sovereigntist-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) suddenly surging in support in the wake of the deadly Aschaffenburg attack last week, just the latest instance of a “mentally ill” foreigner killing members of the public.
YouGov Germany says that the AfD is up four points in a week to 23 per cent, with just 25 days to go to the German snap election, called after the collapse of the left-wing coalition government in Berlin a day after Donald Trump’s victory in November.
This is the party’s highest result from YouGov since its last peak in January 2024, and several recent polls suggest the party may be riding the crest of a wave of support just as election day comes. If this polling was reflected at the ballot box in February, the AfD would jump to 23 per cent from the 10 per cent they achieved at the last Federal elections in 2021.
It would also put the sovereigntist party, which has been decried as racist and outright dangerous to the German constitutional settlement by the establishment left, a not-so-distant second behind the legacy globalist centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), formerly the party of migrant crisis Chancellor Angela Merkel, which picked up one extra point in the past week to hit 29 per cent.
It’s bad news for the globalist centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), however, who collapsed four points in a week to 15 per cent. This “is a clear and statistically significant decline”, says YouGov, and a total collapse in support from the 25 per cent they achieved at the 2021 Federal elections in which they placed first.
“For over a year, immigration and asylum policy has been the most important issue”, YouGov analysis notes. Still, even so, in this polling taken since the Aschaffenburg attack, the importance of immigration policy has jumped once again, rising a colossal 13 points in just a week. And for the first time immigration is the most important issue for voters of almost all parties — except the hard-left Green party.
While Germans seem to agree that migration policy is one of the key challenges facing the country, what this means is split between them, with 38 per cent saying they see migration as a burden and 34 per cent seeing it as a boon. Naturally, this cuts down to party affiliation: sovereigntist AfD voters overwhelmingly see immigration as a problem, and hard-left Green voters see it as essential.
The conservative CDU have a harder time treading a path on this matter because their own voters don’t agree with each other, being roughly split in opinion either way. Whatever choice they make will alienate their own base just before an election. While the CDU has shut its pro-border control voters out in the past, at this moment in time it is trying embracing them, with its leader Friedrich Merz working with the AfD to pass immigration restrictions left-wing critics say are unacceptable on Wednesday night.
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