Election campaign in Thuringia and Saxony enters final spurt

Shortly before the state elections, the ZDF Politbarometer Extra sees the AfD as the strongest force in Thuringia - in Saxony, the CDU can expect to win the election. This is the result of the new survey by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen published on "heute journal". New state parliaments will be elected in both federal states on Sunday.

This Friday, the parties are once again campaigning vigorously for support. Top politicians from the federal parties are also traveling to the two states for final rallies. For example, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and SPD lead candidate Petra Köpping are expected to attend the closing rally of the Saxon Social Democrats in Chemnitz.

Survey: AfD ahead of CDU in Thuringia - in second place in Saxony

According to the ZDF Politbarometer, the AfD has 29% in Thuringia, putting it clearly in first place ahead of the CDU with 23% and the Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance with 18%. The Left Party, which has Bodo Ramelow as Prime Minister in the federal state, stands at 13%. The SPD could receive 6 percent, while the Greens could miss out on a place in the state parliament with 4 percent. The other parties would receive a total of 7 percent, with no party achieving at least three percent.

"This means that a coalition of CDU, BSW and SPD would currently have a narrow majority, but other coalitions that have not been ruled out would not," it said. In purely mathematical terms, coalitions of AfD and CDU and AfD and BSW would have a majority, but so would a coalition of CDU, BSW and Linke. However, such options were ruled out by either the CDU or the BSW. However, according to the survey, 29% of respondents are not yet sure who and whether they want to vote for.

CDU holds lead over AfD in Saxony

In Saxony, the CDU, which has Michael Kretschmer as head of government, is well ahead of the AfD with 33%. According to the survey, the Left Party would not be represented in the state parliament with 4 percent - the Greens and the SPD would each receive 6 percent. The BSW stands at 12% in the survey. The other parties together received 9 percent - including no party that would achieve at least 3 percent.

"In addition to the continuation of the government of CDU, Greens and SPD, there would also be an equally narrow majority for an alliance of CDU and BSW," the pollsters said. A coalition between the CDU and AfD would also be sufficient, but this has been ruled out by the CDU. But even in Saxony, 24% of respondents are not yet sure who or whether they want to vote for.

Party preferences hardly changed - despite Solingen

The values for the individual parties have hardly changed since the political barometer on August 23 - even though the new survey was conducted after the suspected Islamist attack in Solingen. On Friday evening, an attacker killed three people with a knife at a town festival and injured eight others. The suspected perpetrator is 26-year-old Syrian Issa Al H., who is in custody in Düsseldorf.

Election polls are generally always fraught with uncertainty. Among other things, declining party loyalty and increasingly short-term election decisions make it difficult for opinion research institutes to weight the data collected. In principle, polls only reflect opinion at the time of the survey and are not forecasts of the election outcome.

Forsa head: uncertainty ahead of elections in Saxony and Thuringia

In the opinion of pollster Manfred Güllner, the outcome of the elections in Saxony and Thuringia is unusually difficult to predict. The influence of the terrorist attack in Solingen on the results of individual parties on Sunday is open, said the founder of the Forsa Institute on Thursday at a panel discussion of the German Press Agency in Berlin. "We have a lot of uncertainty anyway."

The two prime ministers - Ramelow in Thuringia and Kretschmer in Saxony - are both very popular. This also applies to supporters of other parties, but they did not vote for the incumbents. "This is a situation, a decision-making matrix, that we are not used to in the old federal states," said Güllner. "This creates a great deal of uncertainty as to whether the moods that we measure before the election are also reflected in votes." In case of doubt, we really have to wait for the election results, "perhaps also the final result, to know which coalitions are even possible".

"Considerations on tactical or strategic voting"

The Dresden political scientist Hans Vorländer expressed the expectation that the CDU could score points in Saxony with the migration debate. On the one hand, federal CDU leader Friedrich Merz gives the impression that he is taking the reins. On the other hand, Saxony's Minister President Kretschmer has always set the agenda himself. "Unless I'm very much mistaken, this will pull the CDU back up a bit," said Vorländer. "Whether it will be enough to make it stronger than the AfD is another question."

This year, there are a particularly large number of undecided voters, said the long-standing researcher at TU Dresden. And among these voters, "there are indeed considerations of tactical or strategic voting". The question is whether the CDU should be made the strongest force or whether the Greens and SPD should be helped into the Saxon state parliament "so that the CDU is not embarrassed to enter into talks with BSW".