A good week before the state elections in Bavaria and Hesse, the incumbents are in the lead in surveys in both federal states. In a survey conducted by the Elections research group for the ZDF “Politbarometer”, the CDU of Hesse’s Prime Minister Boris Rhein achieved a value of 32 percent for the “Sunday Question” and was thus able to expand its lead.
While the CDU gained two points compared to the previous survey three weeks ago, the Greens, the current coalition partner, lost two points and are now at 17 percent. The SPD also fell by two points to 17 percent, the AfD remained at 16 percent. The FDP would have to worry about entering the state parliament with 5 percent (minus 1), while the Left would not be represented in Wiesbaden with an unchanged 3 percent.
CSU is still at 36 percent
In Bavaria, Prime Minister Markus Söder’s CSU is still clearly in the lead. The unchanged value of 36 percent is below the weak result of the previous election in 2018, when the CSU achieved 37.2 percent. Söder’s coalition partner Free Voters received 15 percent, one point less than three weeks ago, while the Greens and SPD remained unchanged at 16 and 9 percent respectively. The AfD gained two points to 14 percent. In addition to the previous coalition, a black-green alliance would also be possible, the ZDF report said.
According to “Politbarometer”, there are still many undecided voters in both countries. In Hesse this value is 32 percent and in Bavaria it is even 38 percent.
For the representative survey, 1,222 randomly selected eligible voters in Bavaria and 1,041 in Hesse were interviewed by telephone from September 25th to 28th.
Election surveys are generally 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 research group indicates a statistical margin of error of two to three percentage points. In principle, surveys only reflect the opinion at the time of the survey and are not predictions of the election outcome.
