In the December release of ARD-DeutschlandTrend, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz was more popular than Merkel. Despite her stable support, Merkel is quite often not Germany’s most popular politician (Putin has never given up first place in Russia in his 20 years in power). German politics are quite lively, and that's reflected in the polls. Leaders appear in the top 10 of most popular politicians and drop out of it based on a news cycle as relentless as in any other democratic country. That conventional wisdom, however, should be challenged. “The power of which Germans are the least suspicious is the power of habit,” commentator Nico Fried wrote in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung last month, marking the moment when the length of Merkel's tenure passed that of Germany's first post-World War II chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. The conventional wisdom explaining why Merkel has gotten away with her supposedly democracy-destroying ways is that Germans hate change. To people steeped in the political cultures of the English-speaking world, that is a symptom that Germany has become less democratic under Merkel. In 2017, when Social Democrat Martin Schulz, whose previous career was in the European Union rather than at home, battled Merkel for the chancellorship, he called her political style - her droning speeches and her way of developing important decisions in backroom talks - “an attack on democracy.” Merkel’s poll performance is matched only by that of authoritarian leaders such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia (which some social scientists have tested and found realistic, despite the obvious distorting power of a repressive regime). So does French President Emmanuel Macron, the great political disruptor, whose confidence rating bottomed out in the low 30s in 2018 and is back to 40% now. have favorability and satisfaction ratings close to 40%, well below Merkel’s steady majority support. But even those politicians who have come to power on the wave of that disappointment aren’t overwhelmingly popular. Voters have been disappointed with the technocratic liberal elites. While Germany as a country hasn’t escaped these trends, such as political fragmentation and anti-establishment protest, during the Merkel era, she herself has withstood their onslaught like a rock at the bottom of a rapid stream.Īs the political scientist Yasha Mounk wrote in 2018, “the ability of liberal democracies around the world to translate popular views into public policy has declined.” Traditional parties have lost their appeal to many voters, but entrenched political establishments held back the representation of new forces. Merkel’s enduring popularity - a majority of Germans has been satisfied with her work almost throughout her almost 170-month tenure, the second longest run after Helmut Kohl’s 193 months - is a phenomenon that defies every current political trend in democratic societies. Satisfaction with her work is 6 percentage points up from the previous month despite the seeming fragility of the indecisive and fractious government she leads, nonexistent economic growth, and a marked lack of German leadership in international affairs. (Bloomberg Opinion) - This month’s edition of the ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll, one of the longest-running and most authoritative political opinion surveys in Germany, names Angela Merkel as the nation’s most popular politician.
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