CDU leader Friedrich Merz and AfD’s Alice Weidel
The right-wing, anti-globalist AfD party has crossed another political threshold in Germany, taking first place in a federal-election poll in North Rhine-Westphalia for the first time.
In Germany’s most populous state, Forsa puts the AfD at 24%, ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU on 22%, according to reports from the German press.
The location is as significant as the numbers. North Rhine-Westphalia is the industrial heartland of western Germany, home to Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund and the Ruhr — territory where the AfD once struggled to approach its eastern German strength.
Only six months ago, the CDU still led the AfD by four percentage points on the Bundestag question. That advantage has not merely disappeared; it has flipped, with the AfD rising as Merz’s party falls to its weakest NRW result ever measured by Forsa.
NORDRHEIN-WESTFALEN | Sonntagsfrage Bundestagswahl Forsa/Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger
AfD: 24% (+2)
CDU: 22% (-4)
GRÜNE: 18%
SPD: 14% (+1)
LINKE: 12% (+3)
FDP: 3% (-1)
Sonstige: 7% (-1)
Änderungen zur letzten Umfrage vom 22. April 2026
Verlauf: https://t.co/BFZmdFPvIW#btw29 https://t.co/8HxWHdoMm3 pic.twitter.com/Aq1Ll352E8
— Deutschland Wählt (@Wahlen_DE) September 23, 2026
The CDU’s 22% breaks below its previous Forsa low of 23% from December 2021. For a party that once treated western Germany as secure political ground, the result points to an erosion that can no longer be explained solely by the peculiarities of the former communist east.
The other parties remain well behind. In the state-election polling, the Greens register 18%, the SPD 14%, the Left 8% and the FDP only 3%, leaving the CDU and AfD as the two strongest forces by a clear margin.
On the federal-election question, the AfD’s position is even stronger. Its 24% places it ahead of the CDU on 22%, with the Greens on 18%, SPD on 14%, the Left on 12% and FDP on 3%.
Forsa questioned 1,030 eligible voters between September 7 and 18, and the stated sampling error is around 2.5 percentage points. The AfD’s two-point advantage over the CDU therefore falls within the margin of error, so the poll shows a statistical contest for first rather than proof of a settled lead.
The trend, however, comes at a disastrous moment for Merz. Recent state elections have already exposed deep weakness in the CDU, including its catastrophic 4.9% result in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where it failed to clear the parliamentary threshold while the AfD finished first with 38.3%.
That followed the AfD’s overwhelming victory in Saxony-Anhalt earlier in September. Taken together, the results have intensified arguments over whether Germany’s political center is losing voters faster than its established parties can explain them away.
Merz himself has become a major liability in NRW according to the same Forsa survey. Just 11% of respondents said they were satisfied with his performance, while 87% said they were dissatisfied.
Even among CDU voters, the numbers are punishing. Only 36% of the party’s own supporters expressed satisfaction with Merz, while 64% said they were dissatisfied with the chancellor and CDU leader.
Wüst performs considerably better at home, helping explain why the CDU retains more support in the state-election question than in the federal one. Forsa founder Manfred Güllner said Wüst still provides the CDU with a state-level advantage, but warned that it can no longer fully compensate for the support being lost under Merz.
That creates an awkward problem for the CDU establishment: voters are increasingly separating their view of the NRW government from their judgment of the national party. The closer the state election gets, the harder it may become for Wüst to insulate himself from anger directed at Berlin.
Migration remains one of the clearest dividing lines. AfD NRW argues that Merz promised a fundamental migration reversal before taking power but failed to deliver one, pointing to continued net migration and demanding significantly tougher enforcement.
The party’s NRW program calls for more deportations, an end to repeated long-term toleration of people required to leave Germany, centralized return enforcement and stronger police deportation units. It also argues that people without a legal right to remain should be prepared for return rather than permanent integration.
The AfD has also openly adopted the politically explosive term “remigration.” In May, AfD NRW promoted an event entitled “The right to remigration — consistent application of existing laws,” tying the concept publicly to tougher enforcement of existing residence and deportation rules.
At precisely the moment the AfD is gaining voters, parts of Germany’s political establishment are debating whether the state should examine legal options against it. Wüst recently called for a federal-state working group to study the constitutional handling of the party, while stressing that any eventual ban proceeding would have to remain a last resort rather than a predetermined outcome.
That juxtaposition is politically combustible. The AfD is expanding beyond its eastern strongholds and competing for first place in the country’s biggest western state at the same time officials are considering whether constitutional mechanisms against the party should be explored.
Supporters of such scrutiny argue that electoral popularity cannot immunize a party from constitutional examination. Critics of the approach counter that attempting to contain an increasingly large opposition movement through institutions rather than defeating it politically risks deepening the very alienation driving its growth.
The CDU’s continuing refusal to cooperate with the AfD leaves that dilemma unresolved. Reuters reports that the established “firewall” remains under growing pressure as AfD support expands, while Merz has acknowledged that the party’s recent electoral breakthroughs have inflicted serious damage on his own political position.
The NRW numbers, for the AfD, mark something more significant than another favorable survey: they show the party competing at the top in Germany’s densely populated western industrial heartland while campaigning against migration, support for Ukraine and the governing establishment.
Recent state results show that those themes are increasingly finding voters well beyond the party’s original eastern base.
The political direction is difficult to ignore: Merz is deeply unpopular, the CDU is registering historic lows, the AfD is closing or erasing gaps once considered enormous, and Germany’s establishment now faces an increasingly uncomfortable question — whether isolating the AfD can remain a durable strategy while ever more voters continue choosing it anyway.
The post AfD Tops Poll in Germany’s Most Populous State as CDU Hits Record Low appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
