BERLIN, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Germany's ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) has continued to shed voter support ahead of the upcoming regional election in its Bavarian homestead, according to an opinion poll published on Monday by German magazine Spiegel and the newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine.
CSU is part of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU bloc, which also includes Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
According to the poll, the CSU can now only expect to receive 35.8 percent of votes in Bavaria, down from 37.8 percent two weeks ago, and well below the legislative threshold needed for the party to retain its traditional absolute majority in the prosperous South Eastern state of Germany.
The Greens (Gruene) came second with a backing of 16.5 percent (plus 1.4 percentage points) of voters, followed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 13.7 percent (plus 0.2 percentage point) and the German Social Democrats (SPD) at 12.1 percent (plus 0.3 percentage point).
The findings are likely to add to the woes of CSU leader and interior minister Horst Seehofer who has so far unsuccessfully tried to ward off a growing electoral challenge form the AfD by enhancing his own party's right-wing credentials.
Speaking after a series of violent demonstrations in Chemnitz, Seehofer recently became the subject of international criticism for saying that he too would have marched on the street as a citizen and describing immigration as the "mother of all political problems".
Earlier, Seehofer also escalated a widely-publicized cabinet row over asylum policy by threatening to resign from his post unless Merkel (CDU) backed his controversial "migration master plan".
In the event, Merkel's CDU and the CSU eventually reached a compromise to detain asylum seekers already registered in the EU before arranging their transfer to another responsible European Union (EU) member in so-called "transit-centers".
Commenting on the development, ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder attacked the unprecedented show of cabinet disobedience by Seehofer and warned that the CSU's apparent attempt to contain the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) by toughening its own rhetoric on immigration would prove to be a "fatal mistake" at the ballot box.
This increasingly appears to be the view of acting Bavarian governor Markus Soeder (CSU) who has struck a more conciliatory tone on immigration in response to his party's ongoing decline in polls.
Soeder argued that just as German citizens expected criminal asylum seekers to be deported quickly, they also wanted individuals who had shown a "willingness to integrate" to receive a fair chance in Germany.
