Germany’s populist AfD party has risen in the opinion polls for the second time this June, now superseding all parties in the governing traffic light coalition.

AfD rises in German polls once again

The latest Deutschlandtrend poll, conducted by the German broadcaster ARD, has revealed that if a federal election were held next Sunday, 19 percent of German citizens would cast their ballots in favour of the far-right AfD. The CDU / CSU took the top place in the poll, with 29 percent of eligible voters saying they would give their vote to the conservative sister parties.

According to the poll, the parties that makeup Germany’s governing traffic light coalition, the SPD, FDP and the Greens, are all now less popular among voters than the AfD. 17 percent of eligible voters said that if there were an election next Sunday they would give their vote to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD party, 15 percent would vote Green and just 6 percent would vote FDP.

19 percent for AfD is the highest vote share the party has ever recorded in the Deutschlandtrend poll. Support for the party has increased even in the past month. At the beginning of June data collected by the Insa Institute for Bild am Sonntag showed the party polling at 18 percent, then equal to the share held by Scholz’s SPD.

Majority would support coordinated opposition to AfD

The majority of poll respondents said that they thought it would be a good idea for other German parties to join forces in order to prevent AfD candidates from gaining power in mayoral or council elections. 52 percent of respondents said such an approach was a good idea, 35 percent disagreed with this tactic and 13 percent didn’t know or didn’t want to comment.

The makeup of respondents who opposed other parties closing ranks against the AfD revealed an east-west divide, with 40 percent of opponents living in federal states in eastern Germany.

Though popularity for the AfD is continuing to grow, according to the early June Insa Institute poll, most of the party’s popularity is due to a lack of enthusiasm for coalition government policies rather than active enthusiasm for AfD policies. In early June, only 32 percent of AfD sympathisers said that they fully supported the party’s policies. 

When asked why they would vote for the party, respondents cited a more draconian immigration policy, opposition to the coalition’s climate policy and concerns about the economy as the main motivators.

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