State of the German polls: It’s the final, final, final surveys

So: three more surveys. No kidding

Finality finally got a bit more final: just to annoy me (now here is a narcissist), three further surveys were published today (already yesterday in Germany). One of them is only new-ish: Emnid was in the field from September 14-21, so I take their data as a snapshot of the world as it was on September 17 (last Sunday). Forsa interviewed from September 18 to September 21, resulting in a mid-point of September 19 (Tuesday), while Insa did all their fieldwork on Thursday/Friday. But does this new information in any way alter the expectations? The short answer is:

It makes no difference

Here is a comparison of the overall estimates. They are virtually identical. The CDU/CSU is up by one point, but that is due to different rounding. The probability of the AfD coming third is now up at 99.6 per cent (from 96 per cent) and the point estimate for their lead over the Left is up, too, but again, that is due to rounding – the credible interval is much the same.

  yesterday    today
 Median 95 HDI Median 95 HDI
 CDU/CSU     35 [34-37]     36 [34-37]
 CDU/CSU lead     14 [12-16]     14 [12-16]
 SPD     22 [21-23]     22 [21-23]
 FDP      9 [9-10]      9 [9-10]
 Greens      8 [7-9]      8 [7-9]
 Left     10 [9-10]     10 [9-10]
 AfD     11 [10-12]     11 [10-12]
 AfD lead     1 | [0-2.4] |     2 | [0.4-2.7]

No more graphs, because they would look the same. Coalition options do not change.  If the polls are right on average and the poll aggregation works, Grand Coalition and Jamaica are the mathematically possibilities. To be honest, in six per cent of my simulations a coalition of the Christian Democrats and the AfD would achieve a majority, but that is inconceivable.
That’s it. Move on. Nothing to see here until Sunday evening, which happens to be Sunday noon on my personal timescale.

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