BERLIN (Reuters) - Support for Germany’s opposition Greens has fallen to its lowest level in almost 15 years, a Forsa poll showed on Wednesday, hitting the chances of a left-leaning coalition snatching power from Chancellor Angela Merkel in September’s election.

The survey for magazine Stern and broadcaster RTL showed the Greens shedding one point to 6 percent - its weakest reading in that poll since August 2002. That leaves it hovering just above the 5 percent threshold that parties need to enter the national parliament.

Another survey by pollster INSA published on Wednesday also showed the Greens on 6 percent - behind the Free Democrats (FDP) who were on 6.5 percent and so on track to return to parliament after crashing out of it in the 2013 election.

Some polls have suggested a left-leaning ‘red-red-green’ alliance of the Social Democrats (SPD), the far-left Linke party and the environmentalist Greens could emerge after a Sept. 24 election.

The Forsa survey showed Merkel’s conservatives unchanged compared with the previous week on 36 percent while the Social Democrats remained on 30 percent.

The far-left Linke gained one point to 9 percent. It also improved by half a percentage point in the INSA survey to 9 percent.

The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) was unchanged in both surveys, on 8 percent in the Forsa survey and 10 percent in the INSA survey. The party has lost momentum as migrant arrivals have dropped, infighting has taken hold. The SPD has picked up since naming Martin Schulz as its candidate to run against Merkel.

But even support for him seems to be waning - the Forsa survey showed support for Schulz under the 30 percent level in that poll for the first time since being nominated as the SPD’s candidate. If there were a direct vote for chancellor, 29 percent would pick him - 3 percentage points below the previous week’s level.

That compares with 44 percent of Germans who would vote for Merkel in such a direct vote - 1 point more than last week.</s>The latest weekly B.C. election tracking poll shows the gap closing between the governing Liberals and the NDP Opposition in Metro Vancouver and the Greens making gains, especially on Vancouver Island.

The Mainstreet/Postmedia poll also found that more voters are in favour of the Liberals’ plan to cap bridge tolls at $500 a year than the NDP’s election promise to scrap them.

And the poll, the first since the writ dropped to kick off the campaign for the May 9 provincial election, also found the most popular campaign promise — doubling the foreign buyers tax to 30 per cent — is not identified with the party that floated the idea, the Greens.

Across B.C., the NDP have the most “decided and leaning” voters, at 39 per cent, followed by the Liberals at 37 per cent and the Greens at 21 per cent.

Among all voters, the Liberals (30 per cent, up five percentage points from previous poll) trail the NDP (32 per cent, no change), with the Greens at 15 per cent (up three), the leaderless Conservatives at three per cent (down three) and undecided voters at 19 per cent (down six).

For the past three polls, the NDP has remained between 37 and 39 per cent, the Liberals at 33 to 37 per cent, the Greens between 13 to 17 per cent and the Conservatives between 10 and 13 per cent.

In the latest poll, most of the Liberal gains have come in Metro Vancouver. The Liberals have closed the gap there, coming to within five percentage points of the NDP among decided and leaning voters. The NDP has 43 per cent of those voters to the Liberals’ 38.

Those Liberal gains came as the number of undecided voters dropped sharply among all voters to 21 per cent cent, down from 30 per cent the poll before.

“It looks like a lot of those undecideds broke to the Liberals,” said David Valentin, executive vice-president of Mainstreet Research.

He said the Greens — among decided and leaning voters — have finally hit 20 per cent across B.C. In that category, the Green party has the highest support on Vancouver Island, with 38 per cent, compared with the NDP’s 34 per cent and the Liberals’ 26 per cent.

“In Greater Vancouver, the Greens are taking more from the Liberals than the NDP,” said Valentin. “The Greens seem to be gaining from different parties in different parts of the province.”

Respondents were asked about campaign promises and there were two newsworthy results, on bridge tolls and the foreign buyers tax.

Even though the Greens have promised to double the foreign buyers tax from 15 per cent, twice as many more respondents thought the NDP (31 per cent) came up with the idea than thought the Green party (15 per cent) did.

And 39 per cent weren’t sure who promised it. But 44 per cent of all voters liked the idea of a 30 per cent foreign buyers tax, the poll found.

The Liberals say they’ll cap bridge tolls at $500 year, and the NDP vowed to lift all tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges.

The Mainstreet poll showed that 45 per cent of voters prefer capping to scrapping.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.41 percentage points 19 times out of 20. It’s based on a random sample of 1,650 B.C. eligible voters from April 12 to 14, the first full three days after the election was officially launched on April 11. The surveys were conducted with interactive voice respond polls, also known as “robo polls,’ to landlines and cellphones.

In 2013, former NDP Leader Adrian Dix’s party had a 15-point edge early on in that race but the Liberals won the election weeks later by four points.
A Forsa Institute poll shows the lowest level of support for the Greens in nearly 15 years, weakening the chances of a left-leaning coalition taking power from the CDU/CSU.