MIGRATION: "Solingen attack hits tense situation" Will this help the AfD in the election campaign?

Yes, what does that actually do to the population, to society? That's what our question of the day yesterday was about. We wanted to know from you whether you feel less safe in public spaces due to the recent attack in Solingen . So here are the results again: 58% of those surveyed answered “yes”, 34% said “No, I don’t feel more insecure”. 8% said they were undecided. Janina Mütze is with me, the managing director of the opinion research institute Civey. Janina, if you look at this act in Solingen, how can you even assess its status in society? How much does this affect people at the moment? Well, the attack in Solingen affects an already very tense society. We see that the topic of migration has increased enormously in importance among the population since 2023. Migration and also the issue of internal security, which in the minds of many people are seen together as one complex of issues. And I think the survey of the day that just under six out of ten now feel more insecure is just a brief spotlight, but it shows that the insecurity is there. And the belief that the traffic light government is taking the necessary steps here is simply not present among the population. Now we have the elections in Saxony and Thuringia on Sunday. What do you think, even if you look at the polls now, to what extent will this have an impact? Yes, we see that the AfD has been claiming this issue as its own for a long time and is correctly addressing it in the interests of many people in Germany. So when it comes to the question of competence, the AfD leads quite clearly when it comes to the question of who is most likely to be trusted to organize the issue of migration in Germany. This is an issue that the AfD can play a very strong role in. Therefore, it cannot automatically be assumed that the attack in Solingen will lead to significant shifts in the election results in favor of the AfD. That could happen, but I assume that the AfD has actually had a positive view of the issue for a very long time. It can also lead to shifts, for example in the Union and the CDU, which are now concentrating very strongly on the topic. And we can also see that the Union is basically in second place in Germany when it comes to its competence for a good migration policy in the interests of the German population. It's also interesting that the population has so much confidence in the AfD, even though it has never had to prove itself in practice on this issue. Well, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was also out and about in the East German election campaign. The Greens are in an absolutely difficult situation; this is the case in all three federal states where elections are now taking place. She warned again that in the future only the CDU, AfD and Free Voters could sit in parliament. So is there really a risk of a kind of shift in the party landscape in the eastern German states? That is at least a danger that is now very real in Saxony. We see that the Greens, the SPD and the Left are all somehow seen around the 5% hurdle in the surveys. That means the AfD and CDU are in a neck-and-neck race with just under 30%, a little over 30%. This is followed by the Free Voters, and a very tactical election campaign is already taking place in Saxony. Michael Kretschmer is trying to attract the votes of the Democrats. The other parties are campaigning for the SPD or the Greens to have their vote so that he still has someone to govern. So, it will be very exciting to see what the tactical voters really decide. Janina Mütze, thank you again for this overview. So, these will be decisive elections, which we will also see at the weekend. Thank you.

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