Poll shows German coalition party FDP would fail to enter parliament

The junior coalition partner in the German government, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), would not make it into the parliament, or Bundestag, if nationwide elections were held now instead of next year, a poll released on Saturday showed.

The party of Finance Minister Christian Lindner dropped by one percentage point to 4%, an INSA survey on behalf of the Bild newspaper showed.

The survey took place from Monday to Friday, following the suspected Islamist knife attack that killed three in Solingen.

Parties need a minimum of 5% to receive representation in the Bundestag. Voters don't go to the polls for a federal election until September 2025.

The only time the FDP has not had Bundestag representation was from 2013 to 2017.

The survey also showed that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) improved by one point to achieve 19% backing compared to the previous week's survey.

The AfD is currently leading in the polls for Sunday's state parliament election in Thuringia and is very close to the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in the Saxony vote on the same day.

The survey about the federal vote showed support unchanged for other parties, with the CDU at 31%, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) 16%, Greens 11% and the upstart populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) at 9%. The hard-left Die Linke (The Left) party obtained 3%.

The maximum margin of error for the poll of 1,202 respondents was 2.9 points, meaning the results could deviate by this much, its authors said.