The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party hit an all-time-high approval rating of 22% in the country, according to the latest election polls run by Insa polling institute for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper Sunday.
Fueling concerns about the increase in extremism, the AfD gained two points, which put it just four percentage points behind the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU).
Insa's poll put the CDU/CSU at 26%, meaning it lost a percentage point compared to last week. The survey found support levels for the other major parties unchanged, with the Social Democrats led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz at 18%, the Green Party at 14%, the pro-business FDP at 7% and the Left Party at 5%.
A total of 1,266 eligible voters were surveyed between July 17 and July 21, with a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.
A recent survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of dpa showed that 57% of German citizens currently consider the AfD to be an extreme right-wing party.
The same survey found 19% see the AfD as a conservative party.
Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist party in March 2021, a step that allowed for closer monitoring of the party.
The assessment of the AfD as an extremist party was confirmed by the Cologne Administrative Court in March 2022, though the AfD appealed.
The proceedings before the Higher Administrative Court in Münster have not yet been concluded.
In June, a watershed victory for the populist AfD in a local district election in Thuringia gave the party a governing post in Thuringia, the first of its kind in the country.
That left mainstream political leaders across the country grappling with the fallout from the success of the anti-immigrant and Eurosceptic party long viewed as taboo.
CDU leader backtracks
In a separate development Monday, the leader of CDU Friedrich Merz rowed back from comments that he was open to working with the AfD at a local level, following a backlash from within his own ranks.
In a weekend interview with broadcaster ZDF, Merz said if a candidate from the AfD came to office as a district administrator or mayor, "it's natural to look for ways to then continue to work in that city."
Although Merz ruled out working with the AfD at the level of federal states or in the European parliament, his comments were enough to trigger a reaction from within the CDU and its partner, the CSU.
"To make it clear once again, and I have never said otherwise: the decision of the @CDU still stands. There will also be no cooperation between #CDU and the AfD at the municipal level," Merz wrote on Twitter.