Left-Wing Alliance Gaining Ground

The latest opinion poll published by the Forsa research group shows that in the event of an election this coming weekend, the conservative CDU and CSU parties would win an absolute majority of 49 percent. The survey also revealed that the left-wing alliance of the successor party to the East German communist party (PDS) and the Party for Work and Social Justice (WASG), which was founded in January by trade unionists and politicians who split from Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats, would be in third place in a weekend ballot. They would pick up 9 percent of the votes, more than either the Green party, currently part of the government coalition, or the business-friendly FDP. The poll, which was commissioned by private television station RTL and Stern magazine, put the SPD in second place with 26 percent of the votes. But the reality is that there's a lot of time between now and the planned September federal ballot, and much can change before then. Indeed the majority of those questioned for the opinion poll admitted that they had not yet decided who would get their vote on the big day.