Germany’s AfD leads poll for first time, beats CDU with 26% support

Germany’s rising populist right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has beaten out Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a mainstream conservative party, in popularity in a new survey. 

AFD garnered 26% of support in the poll put out by the Forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis. Merz’s CDU got 24% of support, its worst result since the 2021 election, according to the poll.  

This comes as 67% of Germans say they are dissatisfied with Merz’s job after his first 100 days in office, the poll said. He was elected in May.

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AfD is now the leading opposition party in Germany’s Bundestag.

Earlier this year, the party, led by Alice Weidel, was classified as “extremist” by Germany’s intelligence agency. 

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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio decried the decision, calling it “tyranny in disguise.”

“Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition,” Rubio posted on X at the time. “That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise. What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course.”

The party was founded in 2013 as an anti-euro movement, but since then has taken a hard-right stance on issues like immigration and Islam.

Across Europe, other far-right groups are gaining in popularity, including Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and the National Rally party in France.