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Closed theater in Dortmund (November 2020)
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images / Friedrich Stark
The partial shutdown has been in place for a good two and a half weeks.
Bars and restaurants will remain closed, as will cultural institutions and sports studios.
In the fight against Corona, stricter contact restrictions must be observed again.
The measures initially apply until the end of the month.
The curve of new infections is becoming flatter, but a real trend reversal has not yet been seen.
For this reason, too, an extension of the partial shutdown into December is already being discussed.
How do German citizens feel about these considerations?
The vast majority are open to it: seven out of ten Germans would accept an extension of the stricter rules.
This is the result of a survey by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of SPIEGEL.
When asked whether they found such a step acceptable, more than 50 percent of those questioned answered with “Yes, definitely”, and a good 20 percent with “Rather yes”.
Almost a quarter of citizens reject an extension of the partial shutdown.
Once again it has been shown that the Corona issue is polarizing: The proportion of those who undecided is noticeably low at less than five percent, while the proportion of those who express a particularly clear opinion - in one direction as well as the other - is high.
Another trend that has been observed for a long time: the attitude of the respondents to Corona measures correlates strongly with the political camp to which they belong.
Supporters of the Union, the SPD and the Greens (each over 80 percent) are particularly open to an extension.
The vast majority of potential left voters would also find an extension acceptable.
On the other hand, there is skepticism among FDP voters: only one in three finds an extension acceptable.
AfD voters are even more averse: more than three quarters of them are against it.
The picture looks similar with regard to a possible tightening of the rules, even if the overall acceptance is somewhat lower than in the case of an extension.
Almost two thirds of Germans find stricter measures acceptable, around 30 percent reject them.
Here, too, the following applies: Union, Green and SPD supporters would most likely accept this, and there would also be great acceptance among left-wing voters.
It looks completely different in the camps of the FDP and AfD supporters.
Around two thirds of citizens are open to a combination of extension and tightening.
A good 27 percent of those surveyed reject tougher measures with a simultaneous extended shutdown.
A good five percent are undecided.
An extension and tightening finds acceptance especially among Union voters (over 80 percent).
This is followed by supporters of the Greens, the SPD and the Left.
As usual, there is great skepticism among FDP supporters, but especially among those of the AfD.
Only 18 percent of AfD voters consider a combination of extension and tightening to be acceptable.
As usual, there is great skepticism among FDP supporters, but especially among those of the AfD.
Only 18 percent of AfD voters consider a combination of extension and tightening to be acceptable.
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Background: How does the Civey method work? Up arrow Down arrow
The polling institute Civey works with a multi-stage, fully automated process.
All representative real-time surveys are played in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites ("river sampling"), so not only users of SPIEGEL are interviewed.
Anyone can take part in the surveys online and their answers will be included in the representative result, provided they have registered.
From these users, Civey draws a quoted sample, which ensures that it corresponds to the population in terms of age, gender and population density, for example.
In a third step, the results are then 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.
Why is registration necessary?
The registration helps to weight the answers and thus enables a result for the surveys that is representative of the electoral population in Germany.
Each participant is asked about their gender, year of birth and place of residence.
Then everyone can give their opinion in further surveys on different topics.
How are the results representative?
The answer of each participant 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 eligible population in Germany.
The weighting takes place fully automatically on the basis of the personal information provided during registration and the history of previous responses by a user.
Further details on the methodology can be found in the Civey white paper.
Can you even reach enough participants online?
Opinion polls are usually conducted over the phone or online.
For the meaningfulness of the results it is crucial how many people can be reached and how many actually take part in a survey when they are spoken to.
Internet connections and landline connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - in around 90 percent of households each, cell phones in as much as 95 percent.
The willingness to participate is in the single-digit percentage range for all methods, and experts estimate them to be particularly low for telephone surveys.
So with both methods there is a group of people who cannot be reached because they either have no connection to the respective network or do not want to take part in the survey.
That is why a large number of people must always be addressed to obtain 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.
How do I know the quality of a result?
A sufficient number of different people have to take part before the result of a survey becomes representative.
Civey makes it clear whether this has already been achieved by specifying a statistical error probability for each survey result.
The number of participants and the survey time are also published for each survey.
What does it mean when the colored areas in the graphics overlap?
In our graphics, the statistical error is shown as a colored interval.
This interval shows the uncertainty associated with a survey value.
For example, with 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 be.
If the intervals of two survey values overlap, then, strictly speaking, no statements can be made about the difference.
For the Sunday question, this means: If the polls of two parties are so close that their error intervals overlap, it cannot be deduced which of the two would currently do better in the election.
What happens with my data?
The personal data of the users are encrypted and stored on German servers and remain secret.
Civey employees only work with user IDs for the evaluations and cannot connect users to their voting.
The users' personal information is primarily used to weight the answers and to ensure that the surveys are not manipulated.
To prevent this, Civey uses statistical as well as technical methods.
In addition, Civey works with external partners who create target groups for advertisers.
Your answers may only be used by the partner to model these target groups if users have accepted the data protection declaration both from Civey and from an external partner.
However, a partner does not receive any information about your political and religious attitudes or those with which you can be identified.
Civey users are also not presented with advertising based on their answers.
As a logged-in user, you can object to this being passed on to partners at any time.
You can find more information on data protection at Civey here.
Who is behind Civey polls?
At this point, readers in the app and on the mobile / stationary website have the opportunity to take part in a representative Civey survey.
Civey is an online opinion research institute based in Berlin.
In order to collect its representative surveys, the software of the company, founded in 2015, connects websites to form a Germany-wide survey network.
In addition to SPIEGEL, it also includes "Tagesspiegel", "Welt", "Wirtschaftswoche" and "Rheinische Post".
Civey was financed by the ProFit funding program of the Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Fund for Regional Development.