Poll results

German far-right AfD surpasses Social Democrats to become 2nd strongest party – poll

The populist far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has garnered record high support, latest polling shows. For the first time, the anti-immigrant party has become more popular than the Social Democrats (SPD).

Nationwide public support for AfD, which is known for its controversially harsh anti-Islam and anti-immigrant stances, has once again risen to a record 16 percent, a survey conducted by the INSA polling center for the German Bild daily newspaper shows. Their popularity is now comparable to the record support they once had in September 2016.

At the same time, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) is on a downward trend, as the public support for what once was one of the two major “people’s parties” in Germany seems to be waning. In what was called its worst post-war performance, the SPD received just 20.5 percent of the vote in the recent parliamentary elections in September 2017. Now, according to INSA, public support for the party has fallen to yet another all-time low of only 15.5 percent.