Poll: Merz coalition down to 31% as AfD leads conservatives by 11 points
The INSA Sunday poll puts the AfD at 29% and the CDU/CSU at 18%. Chancellor Merz's coalition would no longer have a majority; Söder speaks today as the Young Union convention closes.
Archive image · Photo: Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
The governing coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD remains mired in a polling slump. In the latest Sunday poll by the INSA institute for Bild am Sonntag, the conservative bloc and the SPD together stand at just 31%. The AfD reaches 29% and the CDU/CSU 18%, with both losing one point from the previous week, according to the report. The Greens stand at 14%, the SPD at 13% and the Left Party at 11% (up one). The BSW and the FDP, at 4% each, would fail to enter the Bundestag. INSA surveyed 1,206 people from Oct. 12 to 16; the institute puts the margin of error at a maximum of 2.9 percentage points.
INSA chief Hermann Binkert said the CDU/CSU and SPD had "lost almost a third of their votes" since the 2025 federal election. Because many votes go to parties falling short of the 5% threshold, parliamentary majorities would be "possible with as little as 43%," Binkert said. An alliance of the CDU/CSU, the Greens and the SPD would reach 45%; Binkert called this so-called Kenya coalition the "most likely coalition option."
The figures come during the national convention of the Young Union, the conservatives' youth wing, in Bonn. After Chancellor Friedrich Merz and North Rhine-Westphalia Premier Hendrik Wüst (both CDU), CSU leader Markus Söder is due to speak on Sunday, with a scheduled start at 9 a.m., as the last prominent speaker of the three-day conference. According to dpa, Wüst and Söder are seen as possible successors to Merz as chancellor. On Saturday, Merz promised the roughly 300 delegates that the reform compromise agreed with the SPD in July would be implemented largely unchanged; his speech drew only lukewarm applause, dpa reported.