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Election posters in Berlin
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
A good three weeks before the federal election, the SPD is the strongest force in the ARD Germany trend for the first time since February 2017.
The party benefits above all from the good values of its chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz.
He is ahead of his rivals Armin Laschet (CDU) and Annalena Baerbock (Greens) in all relevant categories.
53 percent of those surveyed ascribed Scholz's leadership skills.
That is 22 percentage points more than in spring.
With the value he is well ahead of Laschet, who comes to 15 percent (minus eight), and Baerbock, which is eight percent (minus twelve).
That comes from the survey published on Thursday by Infratest dimap.
The citizens also consider Scholz to be the most likable (42 percent) and the most credible (43 percent) candidate for the Chancellery.
Baerbock achieved 23 and 15 percent respectively in these categories, Laschet 13 and 15 percent respectively.
When it comes to the question of who has the greatest competence, Scholz (55 percent) is well ahead of Laschet (14 percent) and Baerbock (7 percent).
If the Chancellor were to be directly elected, 43 percent would vote for Scholz.
Here, too, his lead over Laschet (16 percent) and Baerbock (12 percent) is large.
However, there are still numerous citizens who have not yet made a decision: Almost 30 percent cannot or do not want to make a decision yet.
SPD five percentage points ahead of the Union
The SPD obviously also benefits from the values of its top candidate Scholz.
If the Bundestag election were to take place next Sunday, the Social Democrats would come to 25 percent, the Union to 20 percent and the Greens to 16 percent, according to the German trend.
The FDP would be 13 percent, the AfD 12 percent and the Left 6 percent.
At the moment, a good one in three would prefer a political change in Berlin in favor of an SPD-led alliance.
One in four supports another Union-led government, one in eight one under the leadership of the Greens.
28 percent expressed no preference.
In principle, election surveys only reflect the opinion at the time of the survey and are not a prognosis for the outcome of the election.
You are also always fraught with uncertainties.
Among other things, declining party ties and increasingly short-term voting decisions make it more difficult for opinion research institutes to weight the data collected.
In the surveys of other institutes, too, the SPD had recently overtaken and overtaken the Union.
For the Germany trend, a total of 1337 people were surveyed from August 30 to September 1, who are representative of the eligible population in Germany.
The values fluctuate between 2 and 3 percentage points.
asa / dpa