A leading figure in the German left-wing party, the Bund sozialistischer Wahlverein (BSW), has levelled severe criticism at the media and several opinion polling institutes following the party’s failure to clear the five percent hurdle in the recent federal election.
According to the party’s chief, Sahra Wagenknecht, the media’s reporting on the party’s prospects was biased and began a “negative campaign” against the BSW after the state elections in the summer. Wagenknecht claimed that the party’s chances of success were systematically written off and that the absence of support from certain opinion polling institutes was instrumental in this outcome.
Wagenknecht pointed to a specific instance in the autumn, when the Forsa institute had suddenly lowered the BSW’s predicted share of the vote to four percent, accompanied by a wave of articles in major media outlets suggesting the party was losing support and unlikely to enter the Bundestag. In January, Forsa and the ZDF television network had predicted the BSW would receive only three percent of the vote, again accompanied by numerous articles about the party’s supposed decline and failure to clear the five percent hurdle.
Wagenknecht accused Forsa of deliberately manipulating voter behavior with its poll, which had been 66 percent off the mark in terms of the actual election result. She suggested that a similar margin of error could not be attributed to a serious polling institute and that it was “highly likely” that more than 13,400 people decided not to vote for the BSW as a result of the three percent prediction.