CSU versus AfD Voting

This weekend has provoked a number of news media comments over the possible idea that the CSU might go 'national' and be a threat to the AfD voting pattern.

In a normal typical election, before all this immigration and integration business started up.....the CDU would get thirty-two to thirty-seven percent of the national vote.  The Bavarian CSU could get seven to eight percent of the national vote.  Combined?  They equate to roughly 45-percent in a good year.

With the AfD mix?  I've yet to see a good statistical display, but in state elections....it fascinates me that the Linke Party, the SPD, and the CDU tend to lose votes.  I think the Linke Party is frustrated to some degree....but the SPD is probably more angry than frustrated....knowing that it's a creation of Merkel that got them into this mess.

What happens in a CSU-national election?

My guess is that the two state elections here in the fall will be the last straw, where AfD picks up twenty-two percent-PLUS on the voting pattern and really humiliates the CDU, the SPD and the Linke Party.

The CSU will have roughly five months to put together a program and go national in the the next three state elections.  The CDU will be hostile about this but it's the only way to prevent the AfD machine from getting any bigger.

The key problem to this?  No one that I see in the top five members of the CSU today....have any real recognition or draw across to the German public.  Seehofer himself?  He's reaching retirement and can't be the face on this opportunity.

My hunch is that the CSU in the three state elections in the spring of 2017 would draw somewhere around 12-percent of the vote....limiting AfD to barely eight to ten percent in each state.

The national election in the fall of 2017?  The CSU would continue to have problems with a face that would be energizing the public.....but they ought to get a minimum of twenty-percent of the national vote, and out-draw AfD.

We could all say that this isn't a very attractive situation and simply stalls the AfD from some national platform, but it may be the only thing to prevent the extreme right-wing party from getting serious votes.