German conservatives drop slightly, AfD rises to 22% - poll

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is narrowing the gap with Germany's conservative CDU/CSU bloc in voter support ahead of the February 23 election, according to a new poll released on Saturday.

Early nationwide elections were called following the collapse of centre-left German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's three-party coalition in November.

The INSA institute survey conducted for the Bild newspaper shows that the AfD has risen by 2 percentage points to 22%.

This is its highest figure for a year, said INSA head Hermann Binkert.

The CDU/CSU with chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz lost 1 point and landed at 30%, its weakest result since the end of October.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), an upstart left-wing populist party named after its leader, dropped one point to 6% in the poll.

The other parties remain unchanged at 16% for Scholz's Social Democrats, the Greens at 13%, the pro-business Free Democrats at 4% and the hard-left Die Linke at 3%.

However, the AfD remains without a viable path to government, as mainstream parties have said they are not willing to form a coalition with it.

The INSA survey was conducted from January 6-10 among 1,209 eligible voters. Its findings are in line with other recent surveys.

The maximum margin of error is 2.9 percentage points.