Germany Elections - Shock As AfD Now Second Biggest Party In ‘DeutschlandTrend’ Poll

The Bavarian regional elections to be held on 14 October could turn into another nightmare for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.

The official DeutschlandTrend (the national broadcaster ARD’s daily news) poll released this morning showed that the anti-immigrant rightwing AfD, which is blasted by both governing parties CDU (Ms Merkel’s conservatives) and SPD (Mr Schulz’ socialists) has now become the second largest party in the country should national elections be held this Sunday.

Related coverage: <a href="https://thegoldwater.com/news/37365-Germany-Spy-Chief-Interrogated-In-Parliament-Over-Chemnitz-Migrant-Hunts-Video"> Germany - Spy Chief Interrogated In Parliament Over Chemnitz ‘Migrant Hunts’ (Video)</a>.

The so-called Deutschlandtrend poll by public broadcaster ARD showed that Alternative for Germany (AfD) party became the second-strongest party behind Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives at 18% of the vote, thus for the first time overtaking the socialist SPD.

Would nationwide elections be held today, no two parties could form a majority anymore.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">New Deutschlandtrend survey in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Germany?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Germany</a>: AfD becomes second-biggest party with 18%. CDU/CDU at 28%, SPD at 17%, Greens at 15%. No two party coalition possible anymore. AfD has steadily been growing despite scandals,incidents and bad media coverage. <a href="https://t.co/9Xsck9FpSU">https://t.co/9Xsck9FpSU</a></p>&mdash; Bojan Pancevski (@bopanc) <a href="https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1043028223607488514?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2018</a></blockquote>

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The growing support for the AfD and the sizeable protests all over Germany (which are being kept out of the press at times) show more and more people disagree with Ms Merkel’s immigration policy which she introduced back in 2015 at the height of the Syrian refugee crises. Ever since then, Germany took in over one million mostly Muslim refugees which many fear will be difficult to integrate into German society.

The latest figures come as the governing parties could be seen this week being on different sides over a dispute involving Germany's domestic spy chief, Mr Hans-Georg Maassen, whom some in the Socialist party accused of being sympathetic with far-right ideology as it was claimed he had leaked intelligence to the AfD.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Infratest Deutschlandtrend poll: AfD second-strongest power now with 18%. <a href="https://t.co/ZZodDG8F6b">https://t.co/ZZodDG8F6b</a></p>&mdash; G. Berlin Germany (@gBerlinGermany) <a href="https://twitter.com/gBerlinGermany/status/1043070777485086721?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2018</a></blockquote>

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When questioned in parliament, Mr Maassen stated that he did not believe all the ‘bad press’ that the AfD had received, claiming some of the country’s media was simply ‘hyping’ what had happened in Chemnitz two weeks earlier.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="de" dir="ltr">+++SPD überholt, jetzt nehmen wir die CDU ins Visier!+++<br>Zum 1. Mal in unserer kurzen Geschichte hat die <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AfD?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AfD</a> in einer Umfrage 18 % erreicht - und ist damit auch im ARD-<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DeutschlandTrend?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DeutschlandTrend</a> zweitstärkste Kraft.<br>Und das ist auch kein Wunder!<br>➡️ <a href="https://t.co/7xoF96c00O">https://t.co/7xoF96c00O</a> <a href="https://t.co/JYxoVzrNiE">pic.twitter.com/JYxoVzrNiE</a></p>&mdash; Alice Weidel (@Alice_Weidel) <a href="https://twitter.com/Alice_Weidel/status/1043034248305762305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2018</a></blockquote>

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Whereas Ms Merkel’s CDU party tries to win back voters it is clearly losing to the AfD, it can’t go too far to the right as it then risks insulting its coalition partner.

Meanwhile, AfD leader Ms Alice Weidel welcomed the result, stating that the SPD has now been overtaken and they would try and get the same result as Ms Merkel’s CDU next.

Source: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend-1381.html

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