The anti-establishment Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is now the strongest political force in the Free State of Thuringia, in central Germany, figures from a newly released opinion survey have revealed.
The survey, conducted by the opinion research institute Infrastest-dimap for the public broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), revealed that—if the state parliament were elected today—the AfD would garner 24% of the vote, placing it just ahead of the left-wing, anti-liberal Die Linke party who previously had occupied the top spot, the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung reports.
In third place, not far behind Die Linke party—which captured 23% of the vote—was the liberal-centrist party Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU), which saw its share of the vote decrease to 19%. The left-liberal Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), with 15% of the vote, came in fourth place, followed by the liberal pro-business Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP), with 7%, and Die Grünen (the Greens), which collected a mere 5% of the hypothetical vote.
Thus, if the vote were held today, the formation of a majority coalition between the CDU, SPD, FDP, and Greens would be impossible.
The survey also revealed that some 43% of German citizens are satisfied or very satisfied with the performance of Thuringia’s current minority government, led by Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow of Die Linke party. This is the lowest rate of satisfaction since the state election in 2019.
Meanwhile, to the northeast in the Saxony-Anhalt, results of the election poll placed AfD in second place, with 20% of the vote, behind the CDU which saw its support base decrease to 33%. In third place came the SPD, which increased its share of the vote from 8% to 16%. At the same time, support for Die Linke and the Greens remained stable, at 11% and 6%, respectively.
The election poll comes days after the German Federal Interior Ministry—following an information request from the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag—released figures that revealed that members and politicians from the AfD were the most frequent victims of political violence for the third consecutive year, as The European Conservative previously reported.
