Reports about a meeting with right-wing extremist activists in Potsdam, at which several AfD politicians were present, have so far not harmed the party in terms of membership development. Between January 10th and January 22nd, around 1,400 new applications for admission were received, a spokesman said upon request. In the same period there were resignations “in the mid double-digit range”.
The party has gained just over 1,000 new members since the beginning of the year and currently has around 41,000 members, said the spokesman. However, he pointed out that due to a one-month objection period, memberships completed in January resulted from applications for membership that had already been submitted in 2023.
AfD loses in poll
In a nationwide election survey, the AfD has lost popularity, but remains the second most popular party. In the weekly survey conducted by the polling institute Insa for “Bild”, the party slipped from its previous high of 23 percent to 21.5 percent compared to the previous week.
The other parties in particular were able to make gains in the survey, climbing from 8 to 11.5 percent. This also includes the new Sahra Wagenknecht alliance (BSW), which, however, is not shown separately here. The AfD recently lost slightly in this survey at the turn of the year (minus 0.5 percentage points). Overall, the party has been on a clear upward trend in all surveys since mid-2022. According to Insa, the maximum error tolerance is 2.5 percentage points up or down.
The survey with around 2,000 respondents from Friday to Monday differs methodologically from another weekly Insa survey for “Bild am Sonntag”, which was published two days earlier. There, the AfD remained constant at 22 percent compared to the previous week, while the BSW, which is reported separately, came in at 7 percent.
