The far-right AfD leapfrogged Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats for the first time to rank as Germany’s no. 2 party in a poll for broadcaster RTL.
The AfD had the support of 19% of those surveyed, up two percentage points from a week earlier, with the SPD stuck on 18%, RTL said. The conservative CDU/CSU alliance dropped one point to 29%, the Greens remained on 14% and the FDP on 7%. Forsa interviewed 2,504 people between June 6 and June 12.
The AfD’s rise in recent months has been fueled by discontent among citizens over issues ranging from record immigration, persistently high inflation and costly climate protection measures.
