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Poll: Confidence in government’s ability at rock bottom
Ulrich Silberbach (r), federal chairman of the civil servants’ association dbb, and Manfred Güllner, forsa managing director, presented the results of a survey. photo
© Christoph Soeder/dpa
The confidence of the citizens in the state’s ability to act is worse than ever. That shows a new poll. The numbers also show rifts in society.
Lessons in schools, overwhelmed municipalities when it comes to taking in refugees, endless waiting times for appointments with authorities – the German state has a long list of problems. And that has consequences for the trust of the citizens in its ability to act. It’s after a new one Poll dropped to a new low.
In the Forsa survey for the German Association of Civil Servants (dbb), only 27 percent of those questioned considered the state capable of fulfilling its tasks. That was two percentage points less than last year. 69 percent saw him as overwhelmed – a year ago it was 66 percent.
These numbers are “frightening,” said dbb chairman Ulrich Silberbach – “because of course we live in a time when we realize that the citizens need orientation, that the citizens also need leadership”. The trade unionist couldn’t resist a dig at Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD): “There is someone in the Chancellery who said that whoever orders leadership from me will get it. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the citizens have.”
Silberbach criticized the people’s anger that public service employees had to bear the brunt of it. More than half of them (54 percent) had already been verbally abused, threatened or physically attacked while on duty. “We expect politicians to let public service employees do their jobs,” said the dbb boss. This included adequate staffing and performance-related pay, but also the topic of digitization. Here, the reduction in federal funds from 377 to 3.3 million euros is the “completely wrong signal”.
AfD supporters have the worst opinion
The state’s reputation in East Germany is particularly poor. There, 77 percent of those questioned were convinced that he was overwhelmed with regard to his tasks and the existing problems – in the West it was 68 percent. AfD supporters have the worst opinion. Just 6 percent of them see the state as capable of fulfilling its tasks. According to the survey, it is 22 percent for supporters of the CDU and CSU, 34 percent for supporters of the FDP, 46 for the SPD and 52 percent for the Greens.
When it came to the question of which areas the state was overwhelmed with, there was a significant change. While in 2022 – shortly after the start of the Ukraine war – energy supply was at the top with 17 percent, it is now asylum and refugee policy with 26 percent. The energy supply is only 7 percent. School and education policy (19 percent) and climate and environmental protection (17 percent) were also mentioned very often.
When looking at individual professional groups, as in previous years, firefighters (94 percent agreement) are at the top, followed by nurses, doctors and geriatric nurses. Civil servants (32 percent) and journalists (31 percent) rank in the lower midfield. Politicians come to 14 percent approval. At the bottom are employees in advertising agencies and insurance agents (8 percent each).
Social justice as the most important task
As in the previous year, most respondents named maintaining social justice in society as the most important task of the state. This time significantly fewer citizens (minus seven percent) named investments for climate protection such as the expansion of renewable energies as a very important task.
Forsa boss Manfred Güllner said the numbers contained evidence of fractures in society. This is shown, for example, by the state tasks that are considered to be very important. In the west, 47 percent of those surveyed said they would invest in climate protection, in the east only 37 percent. 50 percent of the citizens in the east consider relieving the burden on citizens because of the increased prices, especially for energy, to be very important, compared to only 37 percent in the west. The creation of equal living conditions in town and country is seen as very important by 43 percent of people in the East, compared to only 27 percent in the West.
A very strong divergence can be observed in the views of the supporters of the Greens and the AfD. “It scares me that we have such a strong, extreme polarization,” said Güllner. For example, the expansion of renewable energies plays almost no role for AfD supporters (11 percent), but for Green supporters it is the most important thing (88 percent).