ZDF “Politbarometer”: 77 percent consider Scholz to be a weak leader

A large majority of Germans believe that Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is a weak leader. In a survey published on Sunday for the ZDF “Politbarometer”, 77 percent of respondents said that Scholz was not getting his way. Only 17 percent said the Chancellor had strong leadership skills. Six percent had no opinion on this question.

Support is also dwindling on the question of whether Olaf Scholz should run again as the SPD’s candidate for chancellor in the next federal election – now only 23 percent want this (August: 29 percent). Even among SPD supporters, support is declining: 47 percent are in favor, 49 percent against. In the last survey in mid-August, 53 percent were in favor and 41 percent against.

The general assessment of the federal government is equally critical: 71 percent of respondents rate the work of the traffic light coalition as “rather bad” (rather good: 25 percent, the rest “don’t know”).

At the same time, 49 percent are calling for new elections, while 46 percent are against it. Supporters of the CDU (56 percent), AfD (95 percent) and BSW (66 percent) are particularly in favor of new elections. Supporters of the traffic light coalition and the Left Party, on the other hand, are mostly against new elections.

While Scholz is perceived by the majority as a weak leader, another SPD politician is far ahead in the assessment of sympathy and performance (“What do you think of?”): Defense Minister Boris Pistorius continues to occupy first place. He is rated on a scale of +5 to -5 with an average value of 1.8 (August: 1.7). CSU politician Markus Söder comes in second with a clear gap, with 0.2 (0.0).

The research group Wahlen surveyed ZDF “Politbarometer” Between September 3 and 5, 1,328 randomly selected voters were polled by telephone and online. The possible margin of error is plus/minus two to three percent.