Germany: CDU/CSU, SPD slump to record lows in new opinion poll

A combined low for the ruling coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel in voter support has emerged in a new survey. Her conservative sister parties CDU/CSU and coalition partner Social Democrats polled 26 and 15 percent respectively. Up to second place are the Greens.

Germany’s regular Deutschlandtrend has charted eroding support for Merkel’s conservatives and especially her Social Democrat (SPD) partners Thursday (11 October), three days ahead of a shakedown regional election in southern Bavaria State.

Compared to a September survey, Germany’s three governing parties, comprising Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) and SPD, each lost three percent compared with last month, recording a combined, below-majority 41 percent.

Surging to second place at 17 percent were the Greens, who in Bavaria also look set to finish second behind a sagging— Merkel’s sister party CSU led by Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. The Greens also eclipsed the SPD.

The Greens already share regional governance in Baden-Württemberg, and in the state of Hesse, where a regional assembly election also takes place on 28 October.

Social Democrats behind AfD

Thursday’s Deutschlandtrend, a sampling of 1008 voters by the pollster Infratest dimap for the public broadcaster ARD, put the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at 16 percent nationwide.

Trailing at 15 percent were the Social Democrats, led by their Bundestag leader and SPD chairperson Andrea Nahles, which decades ago polled twice as much.

Standing level at 10 percent was the opposition ex-communist Left party alongside the pro-business Free Democrat liberals (FDP).

Merkel and Nahles’ SPD renewed coalition bonds in March, despite SPD misgivings, after the collapse last December of a bid to form a CDU-CSU coalition with the FDP and Greens — in the wake of Germany’s September 2017 federal election.

The latest Deutschlandtrend showed voters further dismayed over the six-month-old federal cabinet’s performance, with 56 percent blaming Merkel and 31 percent convinced that hardliner Seehofer bore responsibility.

Only two percent blamed the SPD’s Nahles.

Although half of voters surveyed endorsed cabinet on security policy and a third on asylum policy, three-quarters (76 percent) told Infratest they were generally dissatisfied with the work of the Merkel-led grand coalition.

ipj/rc (dpa, Reuters, epd)

© DW

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