BERLIN, July 28 (Reuters) - Popular support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's embattled conservatives has slipped below 30 percent for the first time since 2006, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday.
A survey by pollster Forsa for magazine Stern and RTL television showed that 29 percent of voters would support her conservatives if a national election was held this weekend — the lowest total since November 2006, the survey showed.
Some 28 percent said they would back the Social Democrats (SPD), the closest the centre-left opposition party have been in polls to Merkel’s camp in more than three-and-a-half years.
Just five percent — the minimum threshold required to enter federal parliament — said they would back Merkel’s coalition partners, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), who took nearly 15 percent of the vote in September’s national election.
The Greens polled 19 percent in the survey and the far-left Left Party 11 percent, giving leftist opposition parties a theoretical 58 percent share of the vote — far beyond the combined 34 percent the ruling conservatives and FDP have.
Support for the ruling centre-right coalition has crumbled after months of infighting, failure to deliver on election promises and accusations of weak leadership against Merkel.
Her personal ratings have also sunk to record depths.
Earlier this month Merkel lost control of the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament) when the SPD and Greens took control of the country’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia.
That followed an embarrassing rebellion in Merkel’s ranks in a presidential election last month which earned her a swathe of negative headlines in the media.
Apathy towards mainstream politicians has increased during Merkel’s woes. The Forsa survey showed that for a seventh week running, eight percent of respondents said they would not vote for any of the five main parties.
Never had so many taken such a dim view of the five for so long since at least 1998, according to the electoral website wahlrecht.de, whose online statistics only date back to that year.
