At the start in second place behind the Federal President: Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) succeeds in his debut in the SPIEGEL politician stairs a dream start. The former Minister of the Interior of Lower Saxony leaves his cabinet colleagues far behind.

This also has to do with the fact that the respondents are more dissatisfied with other frontmen of the Berlin traffic light coalition than they were six months ago. The Greens Cem Özdemir and Annalena Baerbock are losing support, as are the SPD department heads Karl Lauterbach (health) and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (four to six percentage points).

The relegated of the season is Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), who crashes by 15 percentage points – the dispute over the Building Energy Act and the witness affair surrounding his now retired state secretary Patrick Graichen have apparently damaged Habeck's reputation.

At the same time, the prominent Union politicians cannot benefit from the weakness of the competition. Friedrich Merz (CDU) and Markus Söder (CSU) are losing support (four percentage points each).

In the case of the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst (CDU), apparently the biggest problem is that many respondents do not even know him (31 percent).

Controversy over the fight against climate change

On behalf of SPIEGEL, the opinion research institute Kantar Public also asked for attitudes to other topics.

With regard to the fight against climate change, a split in public opinion is revealed: supporters of the Greens (85 percent) and the Left (87 percent) are moving too slowly in terms of action.

On the other hand, supporters of the FDP (52 percent) and AfD (73 percent) consider the pace to be too fast. Comparatively often, younger people (50 percent) and those with a higher level of formal education (55 percent) are also in favor of more climate protection.

Majority of Germans expect a prolonged war in Ukraine

Almost a year and a half after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germans do not expect the conflict to end quickly: two-thirds believe that the war will not end until next year or the year after at the earliest.

Opinions divided on AfD district administrator in Sonneberg

The AfD's success in Sonneberg, Thuringia, worries West Germans more about democracy than East Germans – women in particular often express such fears. In Sonneberg, Robert Sesselmann was the first AfD politician in Germany to be elected district administrator.

For the survey on how the popularity and awareness of politicians are changing, Kantar interviewed a total of 1027 people by telephone.

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