Press
A majority of Germans think that living conditions are worse under Angela Merkel. Psychologist Rüdiger Maas criticizes the survey that shows this. At the same time, he understands the feelings of those surveyed.
Berlin – The line is catchy. “The majority thinks conditions in Germany have worsened since Merkel is no longer chancellor,” writes the YouGov opinion research institute in a press release. It is actually an absolute majority: 61 percent of all respondents believe that living conditions in Germany have deteriorated since Angela Merkel’s retirement from politics. Only a quarter therefore think that they have remained at roughly the same level.
The survey results are a perfect fit for Merkel’s 70th birthday on July 17. They have been quoted many times. Meanwhile, psychologist Rüdiger Maas is critical of the pollsters’ method. “It starts with the questions,” says Maas in an interview with IPPEN.MEDIA: “YouGov has already put the answer into the question, so to speak.” The institute has “suggested that many things were easier under Merkel – in doing so, it carelessly compares her 16 years in government with the two and a half years of the traffic light coalition.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel has had a significant impact on the lives of “Gen Z”
According to its own information, YouGov surveyed a total of 2,030 people online about the former CDU government leader. Specifically, the pollsters wanted to know: “If you think back to the end of the 16 years in which Angela Merkel was the German Chancellor: Would you say that the situation in Germany has gotten better overall since then, gotten worse or stayed more or less the same?”
According to the statement, the sample represents those eligible to vote aged 18 and over – including Generation Z. “Anyone born from the mid-1990s onwards basically only knew Merkel as chancellor,” says Maas. “The younger generation therefore has no reference point at all. As soon as some of them had finished their studies, they were confronted with Olaf Scholz.” From the scientist’s point of view, after the corona pandemic and at a turning point, “it is only logical that these days a longing for one’s own childhood and youth is evoked – Generation Z is also wallowing in nostalgia.”
When Merkel was replaced by Scholz, bigger questions arose
Does this really have nothing to do with Merkel? After all, a majority of those who complain about a deterioration in living conditions in Germany, across all generations, attribute this partly to the work of the traffic light coalition. 28 percent cite the “bad government” of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), 15 percent cite external factors in this context, and more than half (55 percent) believe that both factors are behind the perceived deterioration.
Maas, who heads the Institute for Generation Research in Augsburg, attributes the results to Merkel’s political style. “She left people alone and did not bother them with the big questions of the day,” he explains. corona the younger people as a whole had coped with it far more bravely than the older ones believed. When Merkel was finally replaced by Scholz in December 2021, even bigger questions arose – especially about the Russian attack on Ukraine“It’s only human,” says Maas: “When things get difficult, people long for safer times. This behavior has shaped both younger and older people during the Merkel years.”
#Longing #Merkel #Generation #wallowing #nostalgia