STERN survey
Three quarters of Germans are against coalitions with the AfD
At the end of June, top AfD politicians were able to celebrate their party’s success in the district elections in Sonneberg, Thuringia. Participation in a government will be more difficult to achieve (from right to left: party leader Tino Chrupalla, candidate for district administration Robert Stuhlmann, the Thuringian state and parliamentary group leader Björn Höcke)
© Jacob Schroeter / Imago Images
The AfD is in second place nationwide in the polls. It could even become the strongest force in East German parliaments. But she would need partners to govern – and she is unlikely to find them.
Despite growing approval in polls, the AfD is not a normal party for Germans. A Forsa survey for the star showed that 73 percent of those entitled to vote think it is right that the other parties rule out coalitions with the AfD. 22 percent see it differently. 5 percent have no opinion. In East Germany, the result is not quite as clear: there, 60 percent support the exclusion of coalitions, while 34 percent find it wrong.
95 percent of AfD voters themselves believe that the other parties should accept the rejection of joint governments. Among their supporters, however, only eleven percent support it. The voters of the other parties are largely unanimous in their rejection of cooperation with the AfD. The values are between 92 percent (Greens) and 69 percent (FDP). 80 percent of the supporters of the Union also reject coalitions with the AfD.
Forsa boss: A clear demarcation from the AfD is still appropriate
For Forsa boss Manfred Güllner, the results show “that a clear demarcation of the other parties from the AfD and the exclusion of any government coalition remains as appropriate and correct as in the 2019 state elections in Brandenburg and Saxony and the 2021 state elections in Saxony-Anhalt “. At that time, the three prime ministers, Woidke, Kretschmer and Haseloff, clearly distanced themselves from the AfD in the election campaign and were thus able to mobilize more voters for their party than in the previous federal election in 2017. According to calculations by Forsa, the SPD received over 69,000 votes in the state election in Brandenburg more than in the 2017 federal election; in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt the CDU received almost 30,000 and over 17,000 more votes respectively.
The data was collected by the market and opinion research institute forsa for the RTL Group Germany on June 29 and 30, 2023. Database: 1007 respondents. Statistical error tolerance: +/- 3 percentage points