More like below the five percent hurdle
Forsa boss doesn’t expect Wagenknecht’s party to have much of a chance
October 25, 2023, 3:26 a.m
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Who is afraid of the Wagenknecht party? For the CDU and AfD, worries about potential competition should be limited, says Forsa boss Güllner. Meanwhile, the Junge Union is pushing to rule out cooperation with the alliance.
After the announced founding of a party under the leadership of Sahra Wagenknecht, the Junge Union (JU) is calling on the CDU to expand its incompatibility resolution. “There must be no cooperation for the CDU with the Wagenknecht party,” said JU chairman Johannes Winkel to the Editorial Network Germany (RND). “The CDU has to be very clear about this.” At a party conference in 2018, the CDU rejected “coalitions and similar forms of cooperation with both the Left Party and the Alternative for Germany.”
Winkel warned against being “blinded” by the new alliance. “Wagenknecht has wisely jumped on the anti-wokeness bandwagon.” But she was once the “spokeswoman of the Communist Platform on the left, with Stalin as her political role model.” “Socialism without gender is not conservative, but remains socialism,” said the CDU politician.
Poll ratings “adventurous”
Meanwhile, the founder and head of the Forsa opinion research institute, Manfred Güllner, doubts that there could be major overlaps between the Union’s electorate and the Wagenknecht alliance – and that the question of cooperation will even arise in the foreseeable future. He currently sees the planned party below the five percent hurdle. Güllner told the RND that he considers surveys that confirmed a double-digit value after the company was founded to be “absolutely adventurous.”
In a survey conducted by Forsa on behalf of RTL and ntv on Monday, 3 percent of the 1,001 respondents said they “definitely” wanted to vote for a Wagenknecht party, and 17 percent said they “maybe.” Güllner does not consider the potential to win over voters from the AfD and CDU to be particularly great. “According to our findings, Wagenknecht could attract a small proportion of the previous left-wing voters and only get a few votes from the AfD.” It must be taken into account that the AfD is largely tying up the right-wing radical potential that has always existed in Germany.
The pollster also said that the “Get Up” collective movement launched by Wagenknecht in 2018 “failed miserably” after a relatively short time. He recommended that the CDU in the East “not think too tactically” with regard to Wagenknecht and possible alliance capabilities, but rather to concentrate on the great potential of non-voters. There are more non-voters than AfD voters in the East.