Since the September 2013 German parliamentary elections over 700 national opinion polls have been carried out in the country and not a single one has shown the opposition Social Democrats ahead. In the vast majority of those surveys Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU has led comfortably – to put it mildly – their SPD coalition partners.
That all changed today with the release of Insa’s weekly survey for Bild Zeitung. The dramatic turnabout in SPD ratings already evident in other polls since Martin Schulz took over the party leadership on late January is not merely confirmed, but has actually evolved into a fractional lead.
The poll is the first to show an SPD lead, that lead is within the margin of error, and the poll may turn out to be an outlier, but in a country known for its slow shifts in public opinion, this survey will electrify debate ahead of the 24 September Bundestag elections.
It is worth noting that the very first Insa poll of 2017, on 2 January, gave the CDU an 11-point lead over the SPD.
Party scores in percentages, with changes in brackets compared to the previous Insa poll on 30 January:
- Social Democrats (SPD) 31 (+5)
- Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) 30 (-2.5)
- Free Democrats (FDP) 6 (-0.5)
- Greens (Die Gruenen) 7 (-0.5)
- Left (Die Linke) 10 (-0.5)
- Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) 12 (-1)
- Others 4 (nc)
Fieldwork: 31.01-06.02.2017. Participants: 2088. Method: Online.
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