Courtesy of Mish.
Polls show the support for the anti-euro Alternatives for Germany AfD party as high as 17% according to the Financial Times.
However that 17% is the number of voters who would “consider” voting for an anti-euro party, not the number of people committed to that outcome.
Specifically, the FT article states “AfD is a late entrant for the election on September 22 and might not be radical enough to attract protest voters it needs in order to make it over the five per cent vote threshold for seats in the Bundestag.“
The AfD, led by economics professor Bernd Lucke, is dominated by former CDU members who became disillusioned with the chancellor’s European policy that is broadly supported by a majority of the public.”
Underestimating the Vote
In contrast to the possibility AfD receives less than 5% of the vote as mentioned by the Financial Times, reader Bern who lives in Germany believes AfD is going to receive substantially more than 10% of the vote.
Bern writes ….
Hello Mish,
I just returned from the foundation congregation of AfD party in Berlin.
About 1500 party members from all parts of Germany came to Berlin to form the federal part of the party as per legal requirement in order to participate in the coming federal elections. The party is now legally formed, it has a legal party statute and an election program.
This means that about 50% of all legal requirements are now met. We have another 100 days to meet the other 50% (establish a State arm of the party in each federal State (16) and to collect 2000 signatures in each State). We do not expect any problems arising from these two obstacles.
It can now safely be assumed that AfD is “open for business” for the coming federal elections….
