Bad poll numbers before the election
Saxony-SPD sees serious failures in traffic lights
January 3, 2024, 4:08 a.m
A survey shows that the traffic light parties only have eleven percent for the state elections in Saxony. Only the Greens would even reach the five percent hurdle. SPD top candidate Köpping blames the federal government for this.
A few months before the state elections in Saxony, the SPD state association there blamed the Social Democratic-led federal government for its miserable poll numbers. “The survey results cannot be justified in terms of state politics – but they reflect the mood here in Saxony towards the ‘traffic light’,” said the Saxon SPD top candidate, Social Affairs Minister Petra Köpping, to the Berlin “Tagesspiegel”. She was referring to the latest survey by the Civey Institute, which sees the SPD in Saxony only at three percent – and therefore well below the five percent hurdle.
Given the poor nationwide mood, “state political issues are taking a back seat,” said Köpping. “We’re making that clear in Berlin too.” The federal government had “disappointed the expectations of many people – especially here in the East,” criticized the Social Democrat. “Many have the feeling that they are not being considered when it comes to the many changes.” A new state parliament will be elected in Saxony on September 1st.
FPD in survey at one percent
In the survey by the opinion research institute Civey, 37 percent of respondents voted for the AfD, the CDU came to 33 percent, while the SPD would miss out on entering the Saxon state parliament. The FDP would also fail at one percent of the five percent hurdle, while the Greens got seven percent. The traffic light parties then only received eleven percent of the vote. Eight percent of those surveyed voted for the Left Party. Only with a coalition of the CDU, the Greens and the Left could a state government with AfD participation be prevented.
However, the head of the Forsa Institute, Manfred Güllner, described the survey by competitor Civey as “dubious”. Güllner told the “Berliner Zeitung”: “The SPD will not disappear into obscurity in Saxony.” He sees seven to eight percent as realistic. However, he considers the fact that the Saxon SPD shrank from seven to three percent in the Civey survey within four weeks to be “completely absurd,” said Güllner.