Current politician ranking
Scholz falls, Merz jumps up
January 30, 2024, 3:01 p.m
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Boris Pistorius is still in first place in the trust ranking of German politicians, albeit with slight losses. There are bigger changes further back.
A descent for the Chancellor by four places, at the same time a jump up for the opposition leader, also by four places: In the politician ranking of the opinion research institute Forsa for the RTL/ntv trend barometer, Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz have swapped places. While the Chancellor is only in thirteenth place, the CDU leader has worked his way up to ninth place. In October it was the other way around.
In its politician rankings, Forsa regularly determines which politicians Germans believe the country is “in good hands.” Respondents can give their assessment with values from 0 (“it is not at all in good hands”) to 100 (“it is completely in good hands”).
Scholz has lost seven points compared to October and only has 30 points. Merz gained three points and achieved a trust score of 35 points.
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius from the SPD continues to hold first place in the current politician ranking with 55 points, albeit with a loss of two points. This is followed by three Prime Ministers of the Union: the Schleswig-Holstein Prime Minister Daniel Günther with 48 points (unchanged compared to October), North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst with 47 points (plus 1 point) and the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder with unchanged 41 points.
Behind them are SPD leader Lars Klingbeil and the Green Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, each with 38 trust points. Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil from the SPD achieved 37 points. All three lose two points.
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is tied with Merz in ninth place (unchanged compared to October), followed by Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck.
This means there are four Social Democrats, four Union politicians and three Greens in the top ten. The first FDP politician is in twelfth place with Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann and 31 points. FDP leader Christian Lindner is directly behind the Chancellor in fourteenth place.
The former left-wing politician and current BSW boss Sahra Wagenknecht only comes in sixteenth place with 25 points. However, she has a very high level of trust among her new party’s supporters at 78 percent. With regard to this category – trust among one’s own supporters – only Söder does better than Wagenknecht. Among all eligible voters, she was only able to improve her trust rating by two points. In October 2021, Wagenknecht had achieved 33 points in this ranking.
The two AfD party leaders, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, are in the last two places.
The data for the politician ranking was collected by the market and opinion research institute Forsa on behalf of RTL Deutschland between January 24th and 26th. Database: 1501 respondents.
Further information about Forsa here.
Forsa surveys commissioned by RTL Deutschland.