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Only 1 in 3 Germans back Merkel's refugee mantra

Kate BradyOctober 14, 2015

Fewer Germans believe the country can cope with the number of refugees than did in September, according to October's YouGov survey. More people also think the number of asylum seekers is too high.

An asylum seekers takes a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. von Jutrczenka

The poll, released on Tuesday, showed that an ever-growing number of Germans are losing faith in the words repeatedly expressed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "We can manage this."

Only one in three participants of the poll (33 percent) now agree with the chancellor - a decrease of 11 percent since approximately six weeks ago. Around 64 percent of Germans polled were found to disagree.

The opinion was widely shared across all of Germany's main political groups - the Social Democrats (SPD), the Left Party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) - with 59 to 62 percent disagreeing with Merkel.

Declining support for more refugees

Supporters of Germany's Greens were at odds, however, with 49 percent of the party's voters agreeing with the chancellor and 51 percent disagreeing.

The results also showed that 56 percent of people surveyed think there were already too many refugees in Germany. This figured has risen by 10 percent in just one month.

Only one in five Germans (20 percent) were found to believe that the country could still accommodate more asylum seekers.

Cristicism from within

The chancellor has come under scrutiny for her handling of the refugee crisis in recent works, even from fellow party members.

Leader of the CSU, Horst Seehofer, has repeatedly demanded limits on the number of asylum seekers entering Germany and last week threatened that the CSU would take the federal government to the Constitutional Court over its refugee policy.

"One view is that this is a great migration of modern times that you need to accept and manage. The other - my school of thought - is that immigration must be controlled. I want to control and limit them," Seehofer said on Sunday.

The poll was conducted by YouGov on 1,198 people in Germany between October 9 and 13, 2015.

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