In an Insa survey, the AfD is 22 percent nationwide and thus only four percentage points behind the Union. Insa boss Hermann Binkert told the “Bild am Sonntag”: “This is the highest value that we have ever measured for this party.”
The AfD thus gained two points in the weekly Insa survey. In the surveys of the other large institutes, the AfD was last at 20 percent. The CDU/CSU come to 26 percent (minus 1 point) at Insa and thus take first place in the favor of those surveyed.
Election polls are generally always subject to uncertainties. Declining party affiliations and increasingly short-term voting decisions make it difficult for opinion research institutes to weight the data collected.
The Insa Institute gives a statistical error tolerance of 2.9 percentage points for its latest survey. In principle, surveys only reflect the opinion at the time of the survey and are not a forecast for the outcome of the election.
Baerbock: Shouldn’t make it easier for AfD
In view of the AfD values, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called for more unity in the traffic light coalition. “In times of uncertainty like now due to the Russian war of aggression, populist parties have it easier and easier. We must not make it even easier for them through months of public debates within the coalition,” said the Green politician to the newspapers of the Bayern media group.
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and its consequences were consuming, but some discussions in the government “certainly could have been conducted a little more calmly”. Nevertheless, they advertise that you don’t make it too easy for yourself.
Populism offers supposedly simple answers. “But our world is complex, so I can’t think black and white,” said Baerbock. Compromises are difficult – “but they are the core of democracy, where fortunately not one person bangs on the table and determines everything”.
Alienation of voters from political parties
The chairman of the CDU social wing, Karl-Josef Laumann, observes that voters are becoming increasingly alienated from the political parties. “Of course, we no longer reflect the sociological strata of our population in the political representation of MPs, of leaders in the population,” he said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk.
That is a big problem. “And that has long-term consequences for the acceptance of the entire political system, including parliamentary representative democracy.”
The fact that the Union does not benefit from the dissatisfaction with the traffic light, but above all the AfD, also has to do with the biographies of the management staff. “We also have to have people up front who have a different biography than the current ones,” said Laumann. He is Minister of Health in North Rhine-Westphalia and Head of the Christian Democratic Workers’ Association (CDA).
In March 2021, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist. This classification, which allows the use of intelligence services, was confirmed by the Cologne Administrative Court in March 2022. The AfD appealed. The proceedings before the Higher Administrative Court in Münster have not yet been completed.
A survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of the German Press Agency had shown that 57 percent of citizens currently consider the AfD to be a right-wing extremist party. 19 percent are of the opinion that the AfD is a middle-class conservative party.
