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Germany: Boris Pistorius rated most popular politician

December 24, 2023

The German defense minister has garnered the highest ranking of all politicians in a yearly survey. However, other members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's cabinet have lost points, with opposition figures gaining popularity.

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German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who took the helm at the start of the year, has been given the highest approval rating of all politicians ranked in a yearly surveyImage: Political Moments/IMAGO

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has been rated the most popular politician in Germany, according to a survey cited by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

Pistorius belongs to the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), of which Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also a member. The party came to power late in 2021 and governs in coalition with the Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP).

What did the survey show?

42% of people surveyed by the political research group INSA said they wished for Pistorius to have more influence in German politics. This amounted to 55% of SPD voters, 58% of Greens voters, and 48% of FDP voters, but also 56% of supporters of the conservative opposition CDU/CSU coalition.

Pistorius' predecessor, Christine Lambrecht of the SPD, had an approval rating of 16% last year in an INSA survey. Pistorius replaced Lambrecht in January of this year.

Meanwhile, the chancellor's own rating saw a stark drop, with Scholz receiving a 26% approval rating, which was 10 points less than last year. He had the 12th highest approval rating this year, while in 2022 he was at third place in the INSA survey.

Multiple other members of Scholz's cabinet also lost between 5 and 7 points compared with their approval rating in 2022.

Record-low approval ratings for Germany's Scholz

Opposition parties stand to benefit

This year's survey indicates in increase in support for Germany's main opposition coalition, with the second most popular politician in 2022 being the head of the Bavarian CSU, Markus Söder. The leader of its Germany-wide sister party, Friedrich Merz of the CDU, had the third-highest approval rating.

Bild am Sonntag cited the head of INSA, Hermann Binkert, as saying that CDU/CSU is benefiting from a drop in approval of the governing coalition.

He added that this is also reflected in an increase in approval of the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, as well as for populist politician Sahra Wagenknecht, who split from the socialist Left Party (Die Linke) to form her own group.

sdi/rc (AFP, dpa)

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