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Skeptical looks: CDU Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet (2nd from left) and SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz in the area affected by the flood disaster
Photo: Marius Becker / dpa
Annalena Baerbock, Armin Laschet and Olaf Scholz want to join the Chancellery - but their popularity with the electorate is manageable.
It looks particularly bad for Union candidate Laschet.
In a representative survey conducted by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL, around 17 percent said that they would vote for Armin Laschet for the Chancellery if they were directly elected.
That is the lowest value since mid-May.
Read more about the Civey method here.
This means that the candidate from the CDU and CSU is behind the Green Chancellor candidate Baerbock: 21 percent would vote for them if they were directly elected.
As in the previous week, SPD candidate Scholz is ahead, he comes to 25 percent.
However, there is still plenty of potential for him: 38 percent said they would not vote for any of the three candidates or were still undecided.
If you look at the approval values of the candidates over time, the trend is only up for Scholz: Compared to a month ago, his approval values have increased by around 5 percentage points.
Baerbock's values, on the other hand, were almost 30 percent.
And Laschet had recently fought his way to the top of the popularity scale - only to get the worst value since he was named candidate for chancellor of the Union.
Laschet's misery even continues with his own clientele.
Just under half of the people who lean towards the CDU or CSU would like the NRW Prime Minister to be Federal Chancellor.
For comparison: Around 79 percent of the Greens voters are for Annalena Baerbock as Chancellor.
And around 87 percent of the SPD electorate are behind their top candidate.
As comparatively positive as Scholz's personal polls may be, he is unable to translate his own popularity into greater approval for his party.
As in the previous week, the SPD remains clearly behind the Greens (21 percent) and the Union (25 percent) in the Sunday question with 17 percent.
However, the CDU / CSU trend is pointing downwards a good three weeks after the flood.
Almost 50 days before the federal elections, the gap between the competition and the competition is reduced again.
There is little change in the other parties: the FDP has improved slightly to 12 percent, the AfD stagnates at 10 percent and the left continues to fluctuate between 6 and 7 percent in favor of the voters.
The survey's margin of error is 2.5 percentage points.
Mathematically, alliances of at least three parties would currently only be possible: a traffic light made up of the SPD, FDP and Greens, a Germany coalition made up of the Union, SPD and FDP or a black-green-yellow Jamaica coalition.
