Right-wing Alternative for Germany party rises to 3rd place in latest poll

Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-15 18:58:14|Editor: Zhou Xin
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BERLIN, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is experiencing a late surge in voter support as national elections loom, a survey by a political research institute concludes Tuesday.

The AfD would receive the vote of 10 percent of those polled in the survey, up 1 percentage point from previous polls, leaving the controversial party in the third place behind the Social Democrats (SPD) at 25 percent, up 0.5 percentage point, and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) sister parties with a combined 37 percent, according to the survey conducted by the Insa political research institute for the newspaper Bild.

Despite a slight improvement, the survey shows that SPD leader Martin Schulz has still been unable to close the gap between his party and Angela Merkel's (CDU) conservatives.

After an initial surge in support when he took the reins of the SPD in March 2017, the former president of the European Parliament struggled to translate the so-called "Schulz effect" into a lasting electoral following.

The SPD has suffered defeats in three state elections in Saarland, Schleswig Holstein and North Rhine Westphalia, raising questions over Schulz's ability to compete with Merkel.

More recently, the party was dealt another humiliating blow when the defection of a member of the SPD-Green party governing coalition to the CDU in Lower Saxony, which brought the government of governor Stephan Weil (SPD) to a fall.

The Left party (Linke) fell 1 percentage point to 9 percent, while both the Green party (Gruene) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) held steady at 7 and 9 percent respectively.

According the Insa survey, there would be no majority for a coalition between the CDU/CSU and FDP as they only achieved a combined 46 percent of votes.

A coalition between the Left, SPD and Greens would also fail to muster a majority (41 percent), leaving only another "Grand Coalition" between the CDU/CSU and SPD, or an alliance between the CDU/CSU, FDP and Greens as options to form a government.

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