Ten opinion research institutes regularly ask representative voters in the “Sunday Question” which party they would vote for if there were a federal election next Sunday.
At this point, SPIEGEL calculates the average values from the published survey results.
Accordingly, the Union is currently ahead of the AfD, followed by the SPD, the Greens, the FDP and the Left.
All common surveys are taken into account when calculating the average.
The more recent a survey is, the greater its average weight.
There is no evaluation by the survey institutes.
The political mood fluctuates over time.
After the 2021 federal election, the SPD was the strongest force in the polls for a while, but was replaced by the Union at the beginning of 2022.
After a surge in 2021, the Greens initially settled at around 16 percent.
Then they gained popularity, were temporarily ahead of the SPD again, only to recently fall well below the 20 percent mark again.
The AfD is around 20 percent, the FDP and the Left would have to worry about returning to parliament if there were an election.
The surveys also show which coalitions would currently be possible.
Since the founding of the Federal Republic, the federal government has almost always been governed by an alliance of two partners - the CDU and CSU counted together as a union.
That only changed with the traffic light coalition.
In purely mathematical terms, however, several alliances currently have a majority.
When calculating, the five percent threshold is taken into account in a simplified form: the majority of the second votes from the parties that would enter parliament is calculated.
Overhang mandates are not included in the calculation.
Civey's survey results are also part of the SPIEGEL survey overview.
Since Civey is a cooperation partner of SPIEGEL, you can also take part in the Sunday question here:
AreaHow does the Civey methodology work?open
The opinion research institute Civey works with a multi-stage, fully automated process.
All representative real-time surveys are played out in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites (“river sampling”), so not only SPIEGEL users are surveyed.
Anyone can take part in the surveys online and their answers will be included in the representative results provided they have registered.
Civey draws a quota sample from these users, which ensures that, for example, the characteristics of age, gender and population density correspond to the population.
In a third step, the results are finally weighted according to other socio-demographic factors and values of the voters in order to correct distortions and prevent manipulation.
Further information can also be found in the Civey FAQ.
AreaWhy is registration necessary?open
Registration helps to weight the answers and thus enables a result for the surveys that is representative of the electorate in Germany.
Each participant is asked about their gender, year of birth and place of residence.
Afterwards, everyone can give their opinion in further surveys on different topics.
AreaHow are the results representative?open
Each participant's answer is weighted so that the result of a survey is representative of the population.
For the Sunday question and the government monitor, this population includes the population eligible to vote in Germany.
The weighting is done fully automatically based on the personal information provided during registration and the history of a user's previous answers.
Further details on the methodology can be found in the Civey white paper.
AreaCan you even reach enough participants online?open
Opinion polls are usually conducted by telephone or online.
The significance of the results depends on how many people can be reached and how many actually take part in a survey when they are addressed.
Internet connections and landline connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - in around 90 percent of households, and mobile phones in even 95 percent.
The willingness to participate is in the single-digit percentage range for all methods; experts estimate it to be particularly low for telephone surveys.
With both methods, there is a group of people who cannot be reached because they either do not have a connection to the respective network or do not want to take part in the survey.
That's why a lot of people always have to be addressed in order to get a meaningful result.
In addition to SPIEGEL, Civey surveys are currently integrated into more than 20,000 other websites, including various media.
This ensures that as many population groups as possible can be easily reached.
AreaHow do I recognize the quality of a result?open
Before the results of a survey become representative, a sufficient number of different people must take part.
Civey makes it transparent whether this has already been achieved by indicating a statistical probability of error for each survey result.
The number of participants and the survey time are also published for each survey.
AreaWhat does it mean when the colored areas in the graphics overlap?expand
In our graphics, the statistical error is shown as a colored interval.
This interval shows the level of uncertainty associated with a survey value.
For example, in the Sunday question you cannot say exactly what percentage a party would get in an election, but you can specify an interval in which the result will most likely lie.
If the intervals of two survey values overlap, then strictly speaking no statements can be made about the difference.
In the Sunday question this means: If the poll numbers of two parties are so close that their error intervals overlap, it cannot be determined which of the two would currently do better in the election.
Area What happens to my data? expand
Users' personal data is stored encrypted on German servers and remains secret.
Civey employees only work with user IDs for the evaluations and cannot associate the users with their vote.
The users' personal information is primarily used to weight the answers and ensure that the surveys are not manipulated.
To prevent this, Civey uses statistical and technical methods.
In addition, Civey works with external partners who create target groups for advertisers.
Only if users have accepted the privacy policy of both Civey and an external partner may their answers be used by the partner to model these target groups.
However, a partner does not receive any information about your political and religious views or information that can be used to identify you.
Civey users are also not targeted with advertising based on their answers.
As a logged in user, you can object to this being passed on to partners at any time here.
You can find more information about data protection at Civey here.
AreaWho is behind Civey surveys?open
At this point, readers have the opportunity to take part in a representative Civey survey in the app and on the mobile/stationary website.
Civey is an online opinion research institute based in Berlin.
To collect its representative surveys, the company's software, which was founded in 2015, connects websites to form a Germany-wide survey network.
In addition to SPIEGEL, this also includes the “Tagesspiegel”, “Welt”, “Wirtschaftswoche” and “Rheinische Post”.
Civey was financed by the Investment Bank Berlin's ProFit funding program and the European Regional Development Fund.
Editor's note: In an earlier version it was said that the Union was ahead of the SPD and the Greens, followed by the AfD, FDP and the Left. This was worded misleadingly. The AfD is currently in second place in the polls. We have corrected the spot.