Green Party Extends Its Lead Over Merkel After SPD Resignation

(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Green Party has a three-point lead over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the first national opinion poll since the country’s junior coalition chief resigned.

The Greens stayed at 27%, while Merkel’s CDU-CSU alliance lost three percentage points at 24%, according to the Forsa GmbH poll, reported by German broadcasters RTL and n-tv.

The country’s Social Democratic Party, whose head Andrea Nahles resigned last weekend after its poor performance in the European elections, was unchanged at 12%. The party is now tied with the far-right AFD.

The poll comes days after the Green party overtook the CDU-CSU in a national opinion poll for the first time. The chancellor has been trying to appeal to people across the political spectrum, but has failed to attract voters focused on climate change as a priority.

The poll was conducted on 2,501 people with a margin of error of 2.5%.

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Sachgau in Munich at osachgau@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tara Patel at tpatel2@bloomberg.net, ;Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net, Jon Menon, James Amott

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