German Greens Lead Merkel's Bloc in Latest National Forsa Poll

(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Green Party has pushed past Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat-led bloc for the first time to take the No. 1 spot in a national survey, polling company Forsa said on Saturday.

• One week after their landslide gains in European elections, the Greens added 9 percentage points to their last poll result and were on 27%
• Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian CSU sister party shed 2 points to 26%
• Merkel’s coalition partner in government, the Social Democrats, or SPD, lost 5 points to 12%
• Alternative for Germany was 2 points lower on 11%
• The Free Democrats were unchanged at 8%
• The Left Party lost 1 point to 7%

“The Union parties and the SPD have largely ignored the fact that many of their former voters moved from the liberal center to the Greens already in the Bavaria and Hesse state elections,” said Forsa chief Manfred Guellner, who conducted the survey for media groups RTL and n-tv. Appealing to right- and left-wing voters, respectively, has backfired for the two party blocs, as did the pandering to Green voters after the European elections, which only strengthened the “green original,” he said.

On the issue of political competence, the Greens were on a par with the Union parties for the first time, Forsa said. While 17% of voters each believe that the Greens and the CDU/CSU are best placed to deal with problems in Germany, only 3% of voters still trust the SPD, 8% trust another party and 55% don’t trust any party to solve their problems.

If CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer were to run against SPD leader Andrea Nahles, 24% Germans would vote for the CDU leader and 13% for Nahles. If Kramp-Karrenbauer were to compete against the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, she would get 21% and be defeated by the Vice Chancellor, who would get 26%.

Forsa polled 2,001 people between May 27 and May 31. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rainer Buergin in Berlin at rbuergin1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Erhard Krasny at ekrasny@bloomberg.net, Andrew Davis, James Amott

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