GERMANY: Final YouGov MRP Shows GroKo On Course For Majority
Ahead of the 23 February federal election, the final mass multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) opinion poll from YouGov shows the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union still on course to emerge as the largest party. With its central scenario of the CDU/CSU on 220 seats and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) on 115, this outcome would allow for the formation of a 'grand coalition' (GroKo) with 335 seats in the 630-member Bundestag without the requirement of a third party.
- This central scenario would also pave the way for reform to the debt brake. The absence of the pro-business liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and left-wing nationalist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) from parliament removes two known opponents of reform. The nominally pro-reform CDU, SPD, Greens, and Die Linke would hold 484 seats, well over the 420-seat two-thirds threshold.
- This would allow the constitutional reform to pass if fiscally conservative holdouts in the CDU refuse to back reform, or even in the unlikely scenario the far-left progressive Die Linke sought to block reform on the basis that it could be used to increase German defence spending.
- The 'risk' scenario in terms of political stability and for debt brake reform is if the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), FDP and BSW all hit their 'high' range seat estimates. This would come in at a cumulative 250 seats, enough to form a blocking minority for reform. It would also likely coincide with the CDU and SPD hitting their 'low' range seat totals, requiring a third party to join gov't in a scenario that risks similar coalition ructio as seen in the 2021-24 'traffic light' coalition.
Chart 1. YouGov MRP Central Seat Projection
Source: YouGov, MNI. Fieldwork:
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