Predict the Bavarian state election (October 2018)

[palandio]

Yes, it's way too high. In the past I have been critical of those who were all too happy to write off the AfD at the first sign and all their wishful thinking. But predicting 19% for the AfD is just letting the angstlust (or even klammheimliche Freude) obfuscate your sight.

In the 2017 general election the Bavarian AfD result (12.4%) was almost the same as the federal AfD result (12.6%). So a good base point is to assume that the AfD in Bavaria is about as strong as in Germany as a whole. The federal election results also give a good proxy for the regional and local variation of the vote.

In recent polls the AfD is at 13%-16.5% federally. The two pollsters that give the highest AfD results (INSA [16.5%] and infratest dimap [16%]) are the ones that have been most "friendly" towards the AfD in the past but of course also the ones that came closest to the true 2017 AfD result.

The AfD was underpolled before the March 2016 state elections and before the 2017 federal elections. On the other hand polls before the state elections in Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein and Nordrhein-Westfalen had no systematic bias against the AfD.

In my view a possible AfD surge is already priced even into the (state) polling numbers, which see the AfD at 13-14%. That's reasonably close to the federal numbers. Additionally German pollsters are quite quick in getting the right "gauging" of raw numbers when there is enough precedent (here: 2017 federal election in Bavaria + other state elections).

What I think led to the AfD being underestimated in advance of the 2017 federal election was that the immigration issue had seemingly cooled down during most of 2017 (compared to 2016), at least that was the wishful thinking of most journalists and politicians. It became hotter in the weeks before the election because CDU/CSU and SPD ran sh**tty campaigns centered around nothing. Now it's different. The whole immigration and border discussion has been dominating the news for the last weeks and the polls don't show 19% for the AfD.

Finally this time it's not "Vote CSU, get Merkel", but "Vote CSU, get Söder".

[palandio]

You could of course be right.

But the thing is that many AfD voters have not been telling pollsters their true intent all the time. Pollsters are already accounting for this and changing their secret sauce after every election.