For 54 percent of voting-age Germans asked by opinion polling association Insa, how a party approached social justice was the most important issue for them in choosing whom to vote for in September.

This was even higher in the over-45 category, in which 60 percent named it as their priority.

Among the smaller parties, this figure was higher still with 80 percent of socialist Left party supporters naming social justice their number one topic. For Green party backers, this was 60 percent, and among Pirate Party fans, 63 percent.

While in the bigger parties, the figures were slightly lower. Primary opposition party the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) has 59 percent of its supporters wanting the most effort to be put into tackling social justice.

Sliding to the right side of the spectrum, 41 percent of the conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) supporters named it as their most important issue while only 22 percent pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) followers did.

Other favoured topics for the 2,008 people asked were healthcare with 31 percent of voters naming it number one. Twenty-nine percent chose tackling unemployment, 28 financial matters, 26 percent family policies and 25 percent education, according to Focus news magazine.

“The topic of social justice is important but it is not the only issue,” said Insa head Hermann Binkert. He added that if all the parties decided to concentrate primarily on this area, the CDU and FDP could damage their support base.

DAPD/The Local/jcw