Opinion polls

In the following, you can find graphs charting the "Sonntagsfrage" ("sunday question" - "Which party would you vote for if federal elections were held this sunday?") in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1998 and 2013. However, first let's look at an overview of seven pollsters' political party support numbers from last month (pollsters with more than one poll in one month are represented by their monthly average): Allensbach, Emnid, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (FGW), Forsa, GMS, Infratest and INSA. Data source: www.wahlrecht.de.

Of course, individual political party support varies over the course of time. The "poll of polls" represents the mean of all seven pollsters (including GMS only from 2002 and INSA only from 2012):





Curve index: Black for the CDU/CSU (Christian Democrats, centre-right), red for the SPD (Social Democrats, centre-left) and Die Linke ("The Left", Socialists), green for the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Greens), yellow for the FDP ("Free Democrats", moderate free-market Libertarians), orange for the Piratenpartei ("Pirate Party"), cyan for the AfD ("Alternative for Germany", anti-Euro party); the sum of other parties is represented in white. The framed balls mark each party's election result in the federal elections of 1998–2013.

Curves include gaps right after federal elections. This serves to provide an easier comparison between pre-election polls in the election month and polls in the immediate post-election month.

Forsa's SPD polling has repeatedly faced criticism especially from the SPD's part as it has constantly indicated lower SPD support than other pollsters. In fact the projections frequently – for whatever reason – differ from the other pollsters'.

Traditionally it takes building a majority coalition of MPs to build a governmental majority in the German Federal Parliament. The conventional two-party "minimum-winning coalitions" (CDU/CSU + FDP vs. SPD + Greens) have become increasingly difficult to achieve. Comparing accumulated support for potential coalition partners illustrates this:

If you are interested in further details or want to play with my Excel file, you may download it here: umfragen_1994-2014.xls (9.7 MB). Feel free to send your suggestions, comments and feedback of any (polite ;-)) kind.

Last update (graphs and file): 31 December 2014.