Almost half of Germans expect AfD to be part of German gov't by 2030: YouGov

Source: Xinhua| 2020-02-12 00:33:29|Editor: yan
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BERLIN, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- Forty-eight percent of German voters believe that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would be part of the federal or a state government in the next ten years, according to a survey conducted by the market research institute YouGov on behalf of the German Press Agency (dpa) and published on Tuesday.

Only 29 percent of survey respondents expected the AfD not to be part of a government by 2030, the online survey of more than 2,000 German voters found.

According to the survey, 59 percent said the AfD should not be part of either the federal or a state government, while 19 percent said participation at both federal and state level would be "alright."

Following the political backlash after the election of Thomas Kemmerich of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) as the first premier of the state of Thuringia with the support of AfD votes, Germany's center parties are fiercely debating how to deal with the left and the right parties.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has had to intervene from her visit to Africa, saying that the Thuringia vote had to be reversed. Since then, the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) saw party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer step down.

According to the YouGov survey, 54 percent of Germans said that the events in Thuringia had "damaged their trust in democracy."

For 34 percent, the AfD was the main beneficiary of the events surrounding the election in Thuringia, the survey noted. The governing coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), on the other hand, was considered beneficiaries of Kemmerich's election by only three percent each.

Asked which German parties had been "harmed" by the Thuringia vote, 28 percent of respondents named the FDP, 26 percent the CDU and six percent the AfD, according to the YouGov survey.

The survey was conducted just before Kramp-Karrenbauer announced on Monday that she was not planning to run for the chancellorship in Germany and would resign as CDU party leader.

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