Growing Discontent
September 29, 2006
The German public is losing confidence in both Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic party (CDU), according to an opinion poll conducted on behalf of public broadcaster ZDF and published on Friday.
In the last four weeks, the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), lost three percentage points and landed at 33 percent. That is the worst result that Germany's largest conservative parties have had in regular opinion polls since the country's reunification in 1990.
The historic low in opinion polls for the Christian Democrats is seen as a consequence of the ongoing debate in the grand coalition government about the reform of the country's health-care system. Amidst the continuous disagreements between CDU/CSU and its coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), 83 percent of those polled said they didn't believe the current government was capable of solving Germany's health-care issues in the long term.
Winners and losers
The Social Democrats did slightly better, gaining one percentage point since the last poll, to reach 31. But the true winners seems to be the opposition free-market liberal FDP, whose rating rose by 2 percentage points to 13, their highest rating since at least Oct. 1994.
Support for the Green party remained at 9 percent.
Merkel's own ratings fell over the past four weeks, too. One month ago, the German chancellor placed third on the list of the country's 10 most important politicians. Now, however, Merkel placed fifth -- after Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), SPD chief Kurt Beck, Lower Saxony Premier Christian Wulff and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (both of CDU).
Lack of confidence
In July 2006, 64 percent of those surveyed thought that Angela Merkel was capable of asserting herself in important political matters. Today, only 52 percent of voters rated Merkel's assertiveness positively.
The overall popularity of the government is on the decline as well. Almost one year ago, the coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats was supported by 52 percent of Germans. Today, their ratings are down to 33 percent.
Sixty-five percent of Germans believe that relations between the grand coalition partners are mostly bad -- a 14 percent drop since the beginning of September.
The survey was conducted between Sept. 26 and 28 with 1,288 voters. The margin of error was 2.7 percent.