Survey institutes clearly miss the results of the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt

The survey institutes have once again clearly missed the result of the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt - especially for the CDU. While they clearly underestimated the party five years ago, the values ​​in the surveys before the election were significantly too high.

According to the preliminary final result, Prime Minister Sven Schulze's CDU received 17.2 percent on Sunday. The last surveys by the Elections Research Group, Insa and Infratest dimap for the ARD saw them at 22 to 23 percent. That is five or six percentage points above the actual value - and therefore above the statistical error tolerance. The AfD was clearly the strongest force with 43.8 percent; The institutes had recently seen them at 41 to 43 percent.

The institutes of the Greens and Left were also wrong. In the polls, the Greens were clearly underestimated by five to six percent - in the election on Sunday they achieved 8.9 percent. The Left, on the other hand, only got 8.6 percent, after the institutes had ranked them as the third strongest force with 11 to 13 percent.

The pollsters at BSW made a misjudgment: all three institutes saw the party at three to four percent, below the five percent hurdle, but it actually got 5.3 percent and entered the state parliament. This is still within the fluctuation range. The example shows that even consistent survey results do not provide certainty. For parties within the five percent threshold, even small fluctuations can determine whether they are represented in parliament or not.

At 9.3 percent, the SPD was slightly above the poll figures of seven to nine percent. When it came to the FDP, however, the institutes were right: they saw the party at three percent, it achieved 2.6 percent and missed out on re-entering parliament.

In the 2021 state election, the institutes were clearly wrong. Five years ago, the CDU was underestimated by up to ten percentage points. While the last surveys saw the CDU and AfD almost neck-and-neck before the election on June 6, 2021, then Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff's CDU won by a huge margin in the end.

The last Insa survey for “Bild” saw the CDU at 27 percent two days before the 2021 election, the AfD at 26 percent. In fact, the CDU got 37.1 percent, more than ten percentage points above the poll figure. The AfD, on the other hand, achieved 20.8 percent and was more than five points behind the forecast. For the first time, the party lost support in a state election.

Other institutes also significantly underestimated the CDU. The elections research group saw the party on ZDF at 30 percent three days before the election, and a week earlier even at 29 percent. Infratest dimap determined 28 percent for ARD at the end of May. The actual result was seven to nine percentage points higher.

Election researchers attributed the 2021 deviation to the final days of the election campaign. Before the election this year, the institutes had not expected this effect to be repeated.

The head of the elections research group, Matthias Jung, told the dpa news agency on Sunday that the 2021 surveys correctly reflected the opinion at the time of the survey. However, this had changed significantly by election day. East German voters feel less tied to individual parties than West German voters - which makes the elections more difficult to predict.

The 2026 election shows again: election surveys are not forecasts. They only provide a statistical picture of the mood at the time of the survey. Surprises can arise at any time on election night itself.