Poll as CDU meets: 53% of Germans back political 'firewalls'
An INSA poll finds 53% support firewalls against the AfD, the Left Party or both. Most conservative supporters also oppose opening up to the AfD at federal level.
Archive image · Photo: Reinhold Möller Ermell / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
As the leadership of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats met in Berlin to debate the party's course, a slim majority of Germans said political "firewalls" were right. In an INSA poll of 1,003 eligible voters for Bild, conducted Oct. 8-9, 25% backed a firewall only against the far-right AfD, 12% only against the Left Party and 16% against both, for a total of 53%. Thirty-two percent rejected both, and 15% gave no answer.
Among conservative CDU/CSU supporters, 53% opposed dropping the firewall against the AfD at the federal level, while 29% favored it. According to Tagesspiegel, 48% of all respondents believe distancing from the AfD has hurt the conservatives; 28% do not. INSA head Hermann Binkert said conservative voters' stance was "just as contradictory as that of the party leadership."
On a possible Social Democrat-Green alliance with the Left Party in Berlin, 46% of SPD voters and 15% of Green supporters were opposed. The CDU presidium is meeting in Berlin on Sunday and Monday to discuss the party's recent election defeats.