Especially in the East
Trust in the Chancellor is collapsing
December 19, 2023, 1:17 p.m
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Only one in five Germans still has a lot of trust in the Chancellor. Compared to the first Corona year, this is a drastic loss of trust – but one that corresponds to the general trend.
Germans’ trust in the Chancellor has not been as low as it is now for years. According to a survey by the opinion research institute Forsa for the RTL/ntv trend barometer, only 20 percent of Germans have a lot of trust in the office of the Federal Chancellor.
At the end of the first Corona crisis year in 2020 it was still 75 percent, after which the value continued to fall. Of East Germans, only 12 percent currently have a lot of trust in the Chancellor. Not only the supporters of the opposition parties CDU, CSU and especially the AfD (of which only one in 100 have trust in this institution) have little trust in the Chancellor, but also the supporters of the co-ruling FDP.
Trust in the federal government as a whole has also fallen dramatically: at the end of 2020, 63 percent of Germans had great trust in the federal government; At the end of 2023, only 21 percent have this – a loss of trust of 42 percentage points in just three years. Trust in the Bundestag, i.e. the legislature, has also fallen from 54 to 32 percent since the end of 2020.
At the end of 2023, trust in the Chancellor is almost as low as that in the Pope, which fell to a low of 16 percent at the end of last year in light of the ongoing discussion about abuse cases in the Catholic Church. At the end of 2023, trust in the Pope did not fall any further at 17 percent, but even rose slightly by one percentage point to 17 percent. Only the – relatively few – regular Catholic churchgoers have great trust in the Pope.
The data was collected by the market and opinion research institute Forsa on behalf of RTL Deutschland. Database: 4002 respondents.
Further information about Forsa here.
Forsa surveys commissioned by RTL Deutschland.