Bonn - Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) are poised to crush Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats (CDU) in a state election this month and they also lead at national level, opinion polls released yesterday showed. A poll by the Emnid institute gave the SPD 41 per cent nationwide support against the CDU's 36 per cent in the run-up to federal parliamentary elections on September 27th.
A second poll by the Electoral Research Group for ZDF television showed the SPD scoring 44 per cent of the vote against 25 for the CDU in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, which holds regional elections on April 26th.
With the formerly communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) the only other party to score above the 5 per cent needed to gain seats in the state parliament, such a result would give the SPD absolute control in Saxony-Anhalt.