Polls show far-right AfD still second among German voters

Two recent nationwide polls of German voters both showed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) remains in second place, although the party's support slipped slightly from the previous week.

A weekly opinion poll, conducted for the tabloid newspaper Bild by the INSA opinion research group and released on Tuesday, showed support for the AfD dropping from a previous high last week of 23% to 21.5%.

A separate poll for broadcaster RTL/ntv conducted by forsa showed the AfD down by two percentage points to 20%, although that poll also showed the AfD remaining in second place.

Despite the slight downward drop, the AfD has been on a clear upward trend in polls since mid-2022.

The party has recently been the target of mass anti-far right protests that attracted nearly a million demonstrators at the weekend in cities across Germany.

The protests follow revelations that some AfD politicians met secretly with far-right extremists in Potsdam in November to discuss plans to push immigrants out of the country, including some with German citizenship.

On Tuesday, German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck said that democratic parties need to show the ability to solve problems and pragmatically compromise in order to blunt the rise of the AfD.

"As a democratic majority, we must prove that we are capable of solving problems with a free, open democracy," Habeck said at an event hosted by financial newspaper Handelsblatt.

Habeck, a Green, also took a swipe at AfD co-chair Alice Weidel without directly naming her.

Weidel said in a recent interview with the Financial Times that the AfD would support a referendum to quit the European Union - a so-called "Dexit" - if the party fails to force drastic reforms to the EU.

Weidel told the newspaper that the United Kingdom's exit from the EU following the 2016 Brexit vote should be a model for Germany.

Habeck on Tuesday said that politics could not be much "more stupid" than saying that Germany should leave the EU and the European single market.

Both new opinion polls released on Tuesday showed the conservative opposition CDU/CSU bloc remained the strongest party, at 30.5% in the Bild poll and at 31% in the RTL/ntv poll.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) also continued to slide in the polls, down to just 13.5% in the Bild poll and 14% in the RTL/ntv poll. The Greens were backed by 12.5% or 14%, respectively.

The liberal Free Democrats (FDP) remained at 5% in the Bild poll, the threshold to receive seats in Germany's parliament, while the RTL/ntv poll showed them just below the threshold at 4%.

The far-left Die Linke's slide continued in the Bild poll, down another percentage point to just 3%. The RTL/ntv poll showed Die Linke at 4%.

Voters preferring various other parties increased sharply, from 8% to 11.5%, which may be due to growing support for the newly launched populist Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which was not listed separately in the poll results.

The Bild survey polled a sample of 2,000 German voters between Friday and Monday. Forsa surveyed around 2,500 people over a slightly longer period of time.

Both polls have a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

Election polls are generally always fraught with uncertainty. Among other things, declining party loyalty and increasingly short-term election decisions make it difficult for opinion research institutes to weight the data collected.

In principle, polls only reflect the opinion at the time of the survey and are not a forecast of the election outcome.