Poll: German main political camps see slight drop as AfD up by 1%
The latest poll released on Friday - just days before German snap elections - saw both the conservative bloc and the Social Democrats incur a slight drop, with a two-way coalition following Sunday's vote seeming increasingly unlikely.
The centre-right opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who have consistently been polling in first place in the months leading up to the election, were down by one point at 29%, according to the survey conducted by pollsters Forsa on behalf of broadcasters RTL/ntv.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Chancellor Olaf Scholz also lost one point, dropping to 15% - meaning Germany's main political camps are unlikely to garner enough votes to form a traditional "grand coalition" comprising the CDU/CSU and the SPD.
The Greens, the junior partner in Scholz's current centre-left minority government, held steady at 13%, according to the survey, a result that would also rule them out as the sole coalition partner for the CDU/CSU.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), meanwhile, increased its share by one point to 21%, cementing its hold on second place.
Support for The Left party - on the far left of the political spectrum - also rose by one point to more than 8%, after the fringe party, which for a long time hovered around the 5% threshold usually needed to take seats in parliament - continues what appears to be a last-minute resurrection.
The pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which campaigns on a mix of left-wing economic policies and an anti-immigration views, might both fail to make it into parliament this time around, with the Forsa survey putting them at 5% and 3% respectively.
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