Rightwing populists could make up the biggest opposition force in the next German parliament after a series of scandals appear to have galvanised rather than weakened the chances of the far-right in next Sunday’s election. The Eurosceptic, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has pulled up to third place in four of the last five polls conducted. A survey published on Sunday by the polling institute Emnid in Bild am Sonntag newspaper has the AfD on 11%, behind Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union on 36% and the centre-left SPD on 22%.

Should Merkel and her main challenger, Martin Schulz, agree to continue governing in a “grand coalition” between the two strongest parties, the AfD could lead the opposition in the Bundestag, a role that traditionally carries additional privileges, such as the presidency of the parliament’s budget committee. According to a projection published last week by Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper, the far-right party could end up with as many of 89 out of 703 members in the Bundestag.(theguardian)…[+]