Three weeks before the federal election, the SPD and Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz expanded its lead over the Union in an Insa survey.

In the “Sunday trend” for the newspaper Bild am Sonntag, the Social Democrats gain one percentage point compared to the previous week and are now 25 percent.

The CDU and CSU with their candidate for Chancellor Armin Laschet together come to 20 percent, one point less than a week ago - and, according to the newspaper, an all-time low.

In third place, the Greens of Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock lost one point and are now at 16 percent - followed by the FDP, which remains unchanged at 13 percent.

According to pollsters from the Insa Institute, the AfD with 12 percent and the Left with 7 percent can each gain one point.

The other parties together come to 7 percent (minus 1).

The ZDF “Politbarometer” also sees the SPD ahead

Several surveys by other opinion research institutes had recently seen the SPD on the rise - and in some cases well ahead of the CDU / CSU.

For example, the ZDF “Politbarometer” published on Friday by the Elections Research Group also sees the Social Democrats at 25 percent, while the Union is at 22 percent.

Election polls are generally always fraught with uncertainty.

Among other things, declining party ties and increasingly short-term voting decisions make it more difficult for opinion research institutes to weight the data collected.

In principle, surveys only reflect the opinion at the time of the survey and are not predictions of the outcome of the election.

When it comes to assessing various theoretical coalition options, there are major differences, according to the “Sunday trend”.

According to the survey, a coalition of the SPD, Union and FDP rate 39 percent as good for Germany, 44 percent as bad.

Another grand coalition would be good for 35 percent, but bad for 48 percent.

Of a so-called traffic light alliance made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP, 29 percent say it would be good for the country - 53 percent think it is bad.

Red-green-red found 27 percent good, 55 percent bad.

A Jamaica coalition made up of the Union, Greens and FDP is rated worst: 23 percent rate this variant as good, 58 percent as bad.

According to Bild am Sonntag, the polling institute Insa asked 1,427 people for the “Sunday trend”.

The maximum error tolerance is therefore +/- 2.8 percentage points.