The Free Voters are entering the final stretch of the Bavarian state election campaign with a poll record high: If elections were held this Sunday, the party would get 17 percent, according to BR24 BayernTrend. This means that the Free Voters (FW) gained five percentage points compared to May and are standing for the first time in a BayernTrend in second place behind the CSU.
The representative survey by Infratest dimap took place last week – and therefore after Apology from FW boss Hubert Aiwanger for “mistakes” during his school days as well as the decision of Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU), to stick with his economics minister.
The CSU, on the other hand, recorded a decrease of three percentage points compared to May and is currently at 36 percent. With such a result on October 8th, the Christian Socialists would do worse than in 2018, when they achieved their weakest state election result since 1950 with 37.2 percent. The Free Voters came to 11.6 percent five years ago. Since then, both parties have ruled together in the Free State.
The Greens lose a little, the AfD gains slightly
The Greens are now only in third place with 15 percent (-1). The other two traffic light parties, which are part of the federal government in Berlin, are also worse off on the Sunday question than in May: the SPD is back in single digits at 9 percent (-2), the FDP is even further at 3 percent (-1). away from the five percent hurdle that has to be overcome to get back into the state parliament. The current poll numbers of the three parties are also lower than their result in the 2018 Bavarian state election.
The AfD is different: Compared to May, it climbed one point to 13 percent – and can hope for a better result in the state elections than five years ago. At that time, the AfD got 10.2 percent. All other parties currently have a total of 7 percent (+1).
Majority wants black and orange
According to BayernTrend, together the CSU and Free Voters still have a clear majority in the state parliament. Not only top representatives of both parties, but also half of the voters are in favor of a renewed black-orange coalition in the Free State: 51 percent rate an alliance between the CSU and FW as “good” or “very good” in the survey.
One in three people (34 percent) would like to see a CSU sole government. 28 percent are in favor of a coalition between the CSU and SPD, one in four (25 percent) are in favor of the Christian Socials working together with the FDP. 24 percent consider the black-green coalition to be good or very good – but Bavaria’s Prime Minister Söder (CSU) categorically rules out such an alliance. Interesting: 80 percent of Green Party supporters think black-green is good or very good.
51 percent of Bavarians are still “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the work of the state government. 49 percent give the CSU a good rating (+2), the Free Voters 42 percent (+5). On the other hand, approval for the opposition work of the traffic light parties has fallen: the SPD has 26 percent (-3), the Greens 22 percent (-9) and the FDP 19 percent (-3). The AfD improved slightly to 16 percent (+1).
Opposition politicians have a reputation problem
The best-known state politician in Bavaria is still CSU boss Söder: 98 percent of voters have an opinion on him. The only one who comes close to Söder is the Free Voters leader Aiwanger with 92 percent (+5).
The top candidates of the opposition parties are also making some gains, but they continue to have a problem with popularity shortly before the state elections. Only more than half can or want to say something about Katharina Schulze from the Green Party (61 percent) (+8). Your co-leading candidate Ludwig Hartmann is at 40 percent (+4), just behind SPD leader Florian von Brunn, who improved by 11 points to 42 percent. At 33 percent, only one in three people have an opinion about Martin Hagen (+5). The AfD’s top candidates, Katrin Ebner-Steiner and Martin Böhm, have a popularity rating of 33 and 25 percent; there are no comparable figures for them from May.
Support for Söder in the Aiwanger case
Söder’s decision to continue working with his deputy Aiwanger despite the allegations of anti-Semitism was rated as right by 68 percent and wrong by 24 percent. The majority of Bavarians (53 percent) consider the Free Voters leader’s statements about his school days in the 1980s to be credible, while a good third (35 percent) have doubts about them. The approval ratings of the two politicians are stable: Prime Minister Söder has 56 percent (+1), Aiwanger, as in May, 48 percent.
At the top of the list of topics that the new The Bavarian government should give priority priority, voters see immigration: 27 percent consider this to be one of the two most important problems (+7). This is followed by energy policy with 22 percent (-6) and climate and environmental protection with 19 percent (+2).