Not a day goes by without pithy words from the head of the FDP: “Politicians have to learn again how to get by with the money that citizens generate,” said the finance minister recently in the dispute over the federal budget. The plain language course obviously works: 59 percent of Germans find that Christian Lindner speaks intelligibly. This is shown by the property profile that Forsa collected for the star.
But the attribute “speaks understandably” is the only one where Lindner scored more than 50 percent. The query of other properties shows that the FDP boss apparently has a massive image problem. Only 27 percent of Germans consider him trustworthy. This is the worst value compared to the property profiles for other top politicians collected earlier in the year. 43 percent found the Green Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck to be trustworthy, SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz 41 percent and CDU leader Friedrich Merz still 30 percent.
The verdict is even harder for the property “knows what moves people”. Just 24 percent of citizens have this impression of the finance minister – this is also the worst value of all four top politicians. With the attribute “sympathetic”, however, Lindner surpasses Merz with 37 percent, who had only achieved 24 percent there, but is well behind Scholz and Habeck. 43 percent like the chancellor and even 53 percent like the vice-chancellor.
The FDP boss achieved slightly higher values in the categories of competence (47 percent) and leadership (43 percent). On the second point, he also clearly beats Habeck, his permanent rival in the traffic light coalition, whom only 35 percent of Germans consider to be “strong in leadership”.
The voters of the FDP rate Lindner much more positively. The fact that their own supporters are convinced of their top man is hardly surprising, but the extent is: 82 percent of the supporters of the Liberals consider Lindner to be competent – in previous surveys, neither Scholz, Merz nor Habeck had such a high value among their own clientele can.
The data was collected by the market and opinion research institute forsa for the RTL Group Germany on April 5 and 6, 2023. Database: 1001 respondents. Statistical error tolerance: /- 3 percentage points
The property profiles for Scholz and Merz were collected in January 2023, for Habeck in March 2023
