Germany's far-right AfD tops poll ahead of Merz's conservatives

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Saturday drew ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives in a new opinion poll.

Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), dropped by one percentage point to 25% in the INSA poll for the Sunday edition of the Bild newspaper.

The AfD, Germany's largest opposition party, was unchanged from last week's survey on 26%.

The anti-immigrant party is under investigation by domestic intelligence services for its extremist views, but surged to second place in the 2025 parliamentary election.

In third place were Merz's centre-left coalition partners in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), down one point to 13%.

The opposition Greens and The Left were also unchanged at 12% and 11% respectively.

The margin of error was 2.9 percentage points, with 1,199 respondents participating in the survey.