A new opinion poll conducted in Germany ahead of June’s European Parliament elections shows a significant lead for the center-right opposition bloc over Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government coalition, dpa reported on Friday, citing Agerpres. .

According to a poll published by RTL/ntv, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its “sister” formation in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU) have the support of 34% of voters. This percentage is higher than the combined support of all three parties in Scholz’s coalition: the chancellor’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the liberal FDP party.

In the previous elections to the European Parliament in 2019, the CDU/CSU won 28.9% of the vote. 16% of respondents voted for Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is very close to the 15.8% result obtained in the 2019 elections.

In contrast, the support of his Green coalition partners fell sharply to 14% from 20.5% in 2019. It also fell for the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), which would now be voted for by 3% of potential voters, down from 5.4% in 2019.

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And the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party fell compared to its support levels in recent months, from more than 20% to 15% in a new poll, still well below the 2019 European elections, when it won 11% of the vote .

The survey was conducted by the Forsa Institute with a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points on a sample of 1,008 German voters during March 12-13.

Pre-election polls for the elections to the European Parliament are generally characterized by uncertainty, a decrease in party loyalty and an increase in the tendency to make short-term voting decisions are factors that complicate the processing of data collected by sociological institutes.

In principle, these polls only reflect the opinions at the time of their conduct, not being a forecast of the election results, notes dpa.