After a turbulent election season dominated by the establishment’s demonization of the national conservative AfD—now Germany’s most popular party—the plurality of Germans believe that ending the undemocratic cordon sanitaire against them is long overdue, regardless of who they vote for.
According to a recent Insta survey, published by Junge Freiheit on Wednesday, April 23rd, 46% of all German voters agree with the statement that “AfD should be treated as any other party”—without the others excluding them from decision-making and automatically rejecting any cooperation—while only 33% disagree.
The anti-firewall opinion is shared by almost half of center-right CDU voters (49%), the overwhelming majority of liberal FDP voters (63%), and even 47% of left-wing populist BSW voters. By contrast, the majority of those who vote for the traditional Left—the socialist SPD, the Greens, and the far-left Linke—want AfD to continue to be excluded.
Nonetheless, a majority of all voters (51%), regardless of their voting intention, now believes that AfD will win the next general elections in 2029. Given the current trends, there’s good reason to think that’s possible: the party finished second in the snap elections held earlier this year with 20.8% of the votes, but then the lead in the polls with 26% in just two months.
Die AfD (26%) etabliert sich als stärkste Kraft vor CDU/CSU (25%): Auch in der jüngsten Sonntagsfrage bleiben wir an der Spitze! Herzlichen Dank für die große Unterstützung! pic.twitter.com/wX9Yo3juqC
— Alice Weidel (@Alice_Weidel) April 22, 2025
AfD’s rising popularity is mainly due to incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his CDU backtracking on numerous campaign promises in order to strike a coalition agreement with the socialist SPD, which is set to come back to governance despite delivering the worst election result in its history.
Taken together, the CDU-SPD coalition’s popularity now stands at a mere 40%, a new all-time low for a German government. Since the election in late February, they lost around 5 percentage points, and would no longer be able to govern if the race were held today.
No wonder there’s growing internal pressure within the CDU to let go of the firewall against the AfD, which is becoming increasingly untenable within the democratic frameworks and only seems to strengthen the party’s popularity at the expense of the center-right.
The disillusionment of CDU voters is also reflected in this latest survey: 45% of them predict that their party will lose the next election. AfD’s victory is deemed more likely by the voters of every party, except the SPD and the Greens.
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