Sunday poll in Saxony: Newly formed alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) third strongest force

The newly founded alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) is the third strongest force in a poll on the so-called Sunday question in Saxony. This is the result of the current Saxony trend of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR). In response to the question "Which party would you vote for if state elections were held in Saxony next Sunday?", 8.0% of respondents answered BSW. MDR commissioned the poll from the opinion research institute Infratest dimap.

According to the survey, the BSW could particularly appeal to previous AfD and SPD voters - with 38 and 28 percent respectively.

35 percent opted for the AfD in the Sunday poll - that is 7.5 percentage points more than in the last state election in 2019. The AfD is classified as securely right-wing extremist in Saxony by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The survey sees the CDU as the second strongest force with 30 percent. In the state election five years ago, it was at 32.1 percent.

The SPD received 7.0 percent in the Saxony trend - 0.7 percentage points less than in the last state election. The Greens also received 7.0 percent, 1.6 percentage points less than in the last election. Only 4.0% of respondents would currently vote for the Left Party, which would therefore have to worry about entering parliament. In the 2019 state election, the party had 6.4 percentage points more.

While 41% of respondents are satisfied with the work of the current Minister President Michael Kretschmer (CDU), only 38% are satisfied with the work of the state government made up of Christian Democrats, SPD and Greens.

45% of respondents agreed with the statement "I think the AfD is far-right". Among AfD voters, however, only 5.0 percent agreed. 57% of all respondents agree that the AfD wants to limit the influx of foreigners and refugees (AfD voters 96%). Likewise, 57% of respondents stated that they believe that the AfD does not distance itself enough from far-right positions.

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

In fact, a new state parliament is due to be elected in Saxony on September 1. Parliamentary elections are also planned in Thuringia and Brandenburg in September.

For the survey conducted by the opinion research institute Infratest dimap on behalf of MDR, around 1,200 randomly selected eligible voters in Saxony were interviewed between 18 and 23 January 2024.