Survey: Two-thirds of Germans see AfD as threat to democracy

A majority of Germans view the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a threat to democracy, according to a poll published on Thursday. 

The Politbarometer survey for broadcaster ZDF found 68% of respondents said they considered the anti-immigrant party a danger to democracy, while 29% did not.

In eastern Germany, where the party has surged in recent years, 42% said the AfD posed no threat to democracy, compared with 26% in western states. The party won two elections in the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern last month. 

Opinion is divided on whether the AfD should be banned. Some 43% of those surveyed by the Mannheim-based polling group Forschungsgruppe Wahlen were in favour of a ban, while 51% were against it.

Views on how other parties should deal with the AfD were similarly mixed. Some 45% of respondents said other parties should in principle refuse to work with the AfD, a policy infamously known as the "firewall," while 53% said other parties should decide on cooperation on a case-by-case basis.

Those surveyed were largely critical of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's planned reform agenda. Only 30% said they were broadly heading in the right direction, while 59% said they were heading in the wrong direction. 

Some 80% said the burden of the reforms was being distributed unfairly, while only 12% considered the distribution fair.

If a parliamentary election were held on Sunday, the AfD would remain clearly the strongest party, unchanged at 28%, ahead of Merz's conservatives on 21%.

The Social Democrats would hold steady at 13%, with the Greens up one percentage point to 15% and The Left party stable at 12% and the FDP at 3%. 

The poll survey 1,311 voters by telephone and online between October 5-7.