Reuters - Germany's center-left Social Democrat party (SPD) led Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives in an opinion poll by the INSA institute published on Tuesday in the mass-selling newspaper Bild.
The SPD, which has been reinvigorated by its candidate for chancellor, former European Parliament president Martin Schulz, was on 31.5 percent, half a percentage point lower than in the last INSA poll last month.
Schulz has made fighting the focal point of his election platform,
Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU) sister party were on 30.5 percent. The populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was in third place on 11 percent.