Asylum applications in Germany fell by 34% last year, the interior ministry said on Tuesday, in news welcomed by the outgoing Social Democrat interior minister amid heated debates over migration ahead of a national election set for Feb.

Support for Germany’s center-right CDU/CSU alliance led by Friedrich Merz dropped in a new poll, while the Greens and two smaller far-left parties gained.

The CDU relied on AfD to pass a motion for the controversial bill, breaking a decades-long tradition of excluding the far-right

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) gained three percentage points after refusing to support a divisive bill on migration put forward by the conservatives and backed by a far-right party,

The bill’s defeat — after Merz secured the passage of a similar motion on Wednesday — suggests that some of his own parliamentary group voted against the bill. All of which puts him in an uncomfortable position little more than three weeks from an election that has looked like his to lose.

Less than three weeks before federal elections, the Forsa poll for RTL/ntv also showed support for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) holding steady at 16%. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was unchanged at 20%.

The support for Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc has dropped by 2 percentage points to 28% within a week, according to a recent survey. This comes less than three weeks before the country's federal elections.