Poll: Far-right AfD still leads ahead of German regional election

A few days before the election to the regional parliament in the state of Brandenburg surrounding Berlin, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) remained in first place in a new survey published on Tuesday.

The AfD would achieve 28% of the vote ahead of the previously dominant centre-left Social Democratic Party's (SPD) 25%, according to a survey by the opinion research institute INSA on behalf of the local newspapers Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, Märkische Oderzeitung and Lausitzer Rundschau.

This means that state premier and top SPD candidate Dietmar Woidke, who has been in office for 11 years, would fail his main election goal of making the SPD the strongest force in the parliament that sits in the state capital Potsdam, just outside Berlin.

Woidke had announced that he would no longer take on government responsibility in the event of an AfD election victory.

On Sunday, around 2.1 million Brandenburg voters are called to the polls.

According to the survey published on Tuesday, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) would achieve 16%, ahead of the newcomer Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) with 14% of the vote.

The Greens, the hard-left Die Linke (The Left), and the local Brandenburg United Civic Movements (BVB)/Free Voters alliance all polled under the 5% threshold and are therefore at risk of not re-entering parliament.

INSA polled 1,000 eligible voters in Brandenburg online from September 9 to 16, with a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

In general, election surveys are always fraught with uncertainties. Among other things, the decline in party affiliations and increasingly last-minute voting decisions make it difficult for opinion research institutes to weigh the collected data. Basically, surveys only reflect the opinion at the time of the survey and are not predictions of the election outcome.

The AfD was also ahead in previous surveys. In the ZDF-Politbarometer Extra poll, the AfD came in at 29% ahead of the SPD with 26%. In the ARD-Deutschlandtrend poll, the Social Democrats were just behind the AfD with 26% to 27%.