That was a few weeks ago.
Current polls have the CDU (the current government) at around 30% and the Green party has dropped to 20%.
The chancellor candidate for the Green party Annalena Baerbock has made many mistakes in the past few weeks:
- She received extra income in the thousands of Euro (more than 25K Euro) that she did not previously declare
- Her CV contained many critical faults and inaccuracies (as a regular employee anywhere she would have been fired for sure). She had to correct her CV many times. It is obvious that she pimped her CV to make herself appear more educated and experienced than she really is.
- She wrote a book (well, or had someone write it for her) full of plagiarized quotes without giving proper credit or references. She handled the accusations very poorly by denying plagiarism outright and only then, when the evidence was overwhelming, she blamed it all on her co-writer (or ghost writer more like).
The Green party likes to think of themselves as a moral authority over us lowly inferior plebs so all of this is definitely a pretty embarrassing series of faux pas.
In addition to that, Baerbock has further embarrassed herself massively on quite a few occasions. In a Bundestag (parliament) speech in May she accredited the invention of the social market economy to the SPD (Social Democratic Party).
It is basic education and common knowledge that the chief architect of the social market economy is Ludwig Erhard of the CDU.
All of this has caused the Green party polls to crumble from a neck to neck race with the CDU (which had its own share of embarrassments) down to the current standings of ~20% Green party vs. ~30% CDU.
The only reason the Green party is not even weaker is the massive media support. The vast majority of German media are avid supporters of the left and of Baerbock.
It remains to be seen if or how much the current events will help either party. The CDU candidate Armin Laschet is the prime minister of the federal state of Northrhine Westfalia which has been hit hard by the floods. If he manages the crisis well then the Green party might not profit as much as some may be hoping now.