Nearly two-thirds of Germans want new government, poll says
August 19, 2023
As many as 64% of Germans who answered in the survey released on Saturday said a change of government would make the country a better place.
The poll, for the mass-circulation newspaper Bild, comes the day after a separate survey found that most Germans were dissatisfied with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the coalition.
What else did the poll show?
Only 22% of those surveyed by the polling agency INSA said they thought an election would not benefit Germany.
The same percentage said they were satisfied with the work of Olaf Scholz as chancellor, with 70% saying they were not.
Pollsters also asked about the so-called "traffic light" coalition of center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP). Voters were asked how it measured up against Chancellor Angela Merkel's "Grand Coalition" of conservative Christian Democrats/Christian Socialists (CDU/CSU) and the SPD.
Only 10% said the current coalition was doing better, with 49% viewing it as worse. Some 28% said the result was mixed depending on policy areas.
More bad news for coalition
A day earlier, the "Politbarometer" poll published by Germany's Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (Elections Research Group) on behalf of the public broadcaster ZDF also showed voter dissatisfaction with Scholz.
It found that 51% were unhappy with his performance in office and that 58% thought the government was doing a poor job.
One silver lining for the chancellor was that just over half of Germans thought a government led by the opposition conservatives would not do any better.
There was historically weak support for Scholz's SPD, too. Only 19% said they would vote for the party if an election was imminent, with the Greens on 15% and the FDP on 7%.
The CDU/CSU bloc scored 26% voter support in the poll, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) mustered 19%.
Far-right issues election war cry
AfD leader Tino Chrupalla on Saturday said his party had the CDU/CSU firmly in its sights, with the AfD's voter share having risen from 10.3% in the 2021 general election to as high as 21% in recent months.
"CDU leader Friedrich Merz wanted to halve us," said Chrupulla, referring to Merz's 2018 claim that his party would soundly fend off the AfD's challenge from the right. "Instead, we have doubled," the politician told a conference for the party's branch in the northern state of Lower Saxony.
"We have to halve the CDU," he added, also taking a swipe at the Greens as "the most dangerous party" that would have to be vanquished.
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