Two months in, Germans sour on Scholz's government, survey shows

BERLIN: The majority of respondents to a recent German poll are showing signs of souring on the federal government, just two months after it took office.

The new Trendbarometer poll by Forsa show that only 30% of respondents are content with the work of the sitting coalition, made up of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the Green Party.

That compared to 64% who said they were less content or absolutely not content.

Speaking to people who are party members, 74% of SPD respondents said they were happy with the government's work, as are 76% of Green respondents. But only 31% of responding FDP members said the same.

The survey was conducted for broadcasters RTL and ntv.

Respondents were also critical of the government's response to the crisis in Ukraine, where there are growing worries that Russia is set for an invasion. While Berlin has condemned any such plans, it has come under critique for refusing to send robust military aid.

In the survey, 23% said they were satisfied with Berlin's response to the crisis, as opposed to 67% who said they were unhappy. Looking only at SPD respondents, 52% said they backed the government's Ukraine policy, while 46% said they were unhappy.

In a separate survey by Civey for the magazine Spiegel, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's approval ratings showed signs of decline. It showed that 63% of respondents said he wasn't doing his job well, with only 22% giving him a thumbs up.

When he took office, a Civey survey showed 32% expressing pessimism about his chances of success, as opposed to 49% who expected him to do a good job.

The Trendbarometer survey included 1,000 people questioned on February 3-4. The Spiegel survey involved 5,000 people responding between February 4-7.