A month before the Bavarian state elections, the CSU had to accept its lowest poll number in more than a year and a half in the ZDF political barometer with just 36 percent. After the leaflet affair surrounding their chairman, Deputy Prime Minister Hubert Aiwanger, the Free Voters can once again be happy about 16 percent in a survey – a record figure.
If there were a state election next Sunday, the Free Voters would be tied with the Greens in second place behind the CSU, according to the survey by the Elections Research Group. Behind them are the AfD with 12 and the SPD with 9 percent. The FDP is at 4 percent in this survey, so it has to worry about getting back into the state parliament.
In 2018, the Free Voters got 11.6 percent
The Free Voters also recently saw two other surveys at 15 and 16 percent respectively, each with an increase of four points compared to previous surveys by the respective institutes. However, there has not been a ZDF political barometer on Bavaria in the recent past. What is clear, however, is that Aiwanger’s party is currently well above its state election results from 2018: At that time, the Free Voters won 11.6 percent.
A current Civey survey also saw the CSU under party leader and Prime Minister Markus Söder at 36 percent. The party last had worse survey results around the turn of the year 2021/22. In the 2018 state election, the CSU won 37.2 percent.
In principle, election surveys only reflect opinions at the time of the survey and are not predictions of the election outcome. They are also always subject to uncertainty. Among other things, weakening party ties and increasingly short-term voting decisions make it more difficult for opinion research institutes to weight the data collected. The Elections Research Group states the statistical error tolerance as follows: The error range is good / – three percentage points at a proportion of 40 percent and good / – two percentage points at 10 percent.
