German anti-euro party may be underrated
Surveys may not reflect full extent of support for group, pollsters say
German polling company chiefs said they may be under-reporting voter support for the country’s five-month-old Alternative for Germany — a party that rejects the euro — partly because some of its backers won’t reveal how they plan to vote in interviews.
People who don’t support the established parties aren’t always willing to express their opinions, and this may add as much as 2.5 percentage points to a core of sympathizers that represents around 2.5 per cent of the voters, TNS Emnid chief Klaus-Peter Schoeppner and Forsa head Manfred Guellner said in telephone interviews.
“I’m unsure as to what’s really below the visible tip of the iceberg” in support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Guellner said. “We have them at two to three per cent in the polls right now, but I don’t know what’s below the waterline.”
Under-reporting of the AfD’s potential may yield a surprise result on election night, Sept. 22, that denies Chancellor Angela Merkel the option of continuing her coalition with the Free Democrats. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble’s announcement that Greece needs a third aid program may have given the AfD a boost by putting the euro region crisis back on the agenda.
“We occasionally get tips from informants” at polling companies that actual support is higher than reported support, AfD chairman Bernd Lucke said Monday at a news conference in Berlin.
Asked about Lucke’s comments, Forsa’s Guellner said his company treats the AfD like any other party, cautioning, though, that its number of unreported supporters may be larger than for other parties. Forsa won’t change its polling methodology, he said.
The AfD rose two percentage points, to three per cent, in a weekly Emnid poll for Bild am Sonntag newspaper Monday, the first survey taken after Schäuble’s Aug. 20 comments on Greece.
Before 1996 elections in three western German states, Forsa predicted that parties of the “radical right” would miss the five per cent hurdle required to win seats in parliament, Guellner said. Still, Die Republikaner, a far-right party that warns against mass immigration and wants the Deutsche mark back, got almost 10 per cent at the time in Baden-Württemberg, almost twice Forsa’s prediction.