Polls Continue to Mark Rise of Germany’s Political Right

As a two-month campaign to vilify the conservative and nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) as little better than neo-Nazis begins to run out of steam, recent political polls conducted by Politpro.eu, Statista, and INSA show its popularity stabilizing as voters’ broader rightward turn solidifies. Founded in April 2013, the AfD quickly gained a significant place in Germany’s multiparty system. Within four years it placed third out of six parties in elections to the Bundestag (a legislative chamber roughly equivalent to the United States House of Representatives) with 94 seats and 12.6 percent of the vote. Numbers for the leading Christian Democratic Union (CDU) were 246 seats and 32.9 percent of voter support, while those for the second place Social Democratic Party (SPD) were 153 and 20.5 percent....