Germany’s The Left party is leading in Berlin six weeks before the state election, according to a new poll released on Wednesday.
The hard-left party was on 21% in the Civey survey commissioned by the Tagesspiegel newspaper, up 2 percentage points from the institute’s previous poll in early July.
The conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), the party of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, remained unchanged on 19%, putting them in second place.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) followed on 18%, up 1 percentage point, while the Greens remained unchanged on 17%.
The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) were well behind on 12%, down 1 percentage point.
Berliners are due to elect a new state parliament on September 20. Berlin is one of three German states holding elections that month, alongside Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The AfD is expected to make significant gains.
Around 3,000 people took part in the survey between July 20 and August 3. The maximum margin of error was 3.5 percentage points.
A separate poll published on July 23 produced different results.
The Insa survey, commissioned by the Nius news portal, put the AfD in first place on 19%, with the CDU and the Left Party close behind on 18% each.
The Greens were on 16%, the SPD on 13%.
Opinion polls are generally subject to uncertainty. Declining party loyalty and increasingly late voting decisions make it more difficult for polling institutes to weight their data.