According to an opinion poll published this morning by Germany’s second national TV network ZDF, the three-party government coalition continues to lose popular support, having no more than 42% backing. The Social Democracy of Chancellor Olaf Scholz is down to 18%, the Greens are down to 18% as well, and the Free Democrats are down to 6%. A majority of the electorate oppose the government’s policy for war in Ukraine, its continued domestic austerity course, and its anti-nuclear power policy. Voters are punishing the Free Democrats for their failure to create a corrective to the Greens, as the FDP had promised in the 2021 national election campaign.
In the opinion poll, two opposition parties, the Christian Democrats are at 31%, and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) have risen to 15%. If there were national elections on Sunday, April 23, the Scholz government would be voted out, definitively. As for the AfD, its support has been able to improve, despite large-scale nasty campaigns from the other parties, because it it is a pro-Russia and anti-NATO, backs for nuclear power, and it has insisted that the Bundestag create a special investigation committee to look into the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, of which Germany is a co-owner.
The erosion of the Free Democrats’ voter base will also dominate much of the debate at the party’s national convention in Berlin which starts today. The FDP, the liberal party founded before the war by Hjalmar Schacht, has lost in state parliament elections, and is likely to be voted out of the state parliaments in the three states that are holding elections in May (Bremen) and October (Bavaria and Hesse).
