On Friday afternoon, there could be a showdown between the government wing and the left wing of the SPD. Then namely, when it comes to the fight candidate between Labor Minister Hubertus Heil and Juso CEO Kevin Kühnert for one of the three posts as deputy party chairman.
Shortly before the decisive hours Kühnert has now concretized his ideas for the future of the SPD. "The common good concept is the deciding factor," he told SPIEGEL. This must be unmistakable core of the SPD. "I do not want to spoil people's individuality in everyday life and lifestyle," said the 30-year-old. But it would have to go back more to services of general interest and social compensation.
In addition, Kühnert spoke in favor of a narrower concept of Volkspartei. An economic security for all, that must continue to be the objective. But the SPD should not continue to strive to be elected by all. "The SPD had - beyond the Nazis - no more serious enemies in the last election," said Kühnert.
SPD members should have a say in it
In fact, the party had become so unimportant to many citizens in recent years that they could not even outrage them, even more so about their dealings with their own leaders. His party should focus on people with low income again in the future, demanded Kühnert. There is currently no serious offer for them.
In the future Kühnert wants to have the members of the SPD consistently determined. "For a long time there was a lot of participation illusion, but hardly any real participation." This had only become better in the last two years, Kühnert said.
Only recently has the SPD voted in a membership decision on the new party leadership. Kühnert's favorites, the duo Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, are also to be formally confirmed as chairpersons at the party congress in Berlin. They had narrowly prevailed against Klara Geywitz and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
More about SPIEGEL +
Kühnert also criticized his biggest inner-party competitor, albeit indirectly. The SPD had never lacked in the years marked by Olaf Scholz years of logic, said the Juso boss. "The problem was that the logic was excessive." What would have been missing is the emotionality, the attempt to convince the members or even to inspire.
"The SPD is justifiably proud to be a member party, but many members have been part of everyday life as the mouthpiece of this party for years," Kuhnert warned. "Because they do not want to take the beating for things they can barely explain to themselves, they lacked the sense of purpose - and in part lacked the understanding of what was being done."
If it goes to Kühnert, this should be different in the future. But whether he and the new chairmen actually have power of organization, or whether in truth the government SPD continues to hold the reins, that will show the beginning of the congress.
You want to answer the Sunday question for the covenant? Vote here:
How does the Civey method work?
The opinion research institute Civey works with a multi-level fully automated procedure. All representative real-time surveys are played in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites ("Riversampling"), so it is not only users of SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed. Anyone can participate in the surveys online and will be included in the representative result with their answers if they have registered. From these users, Civey draws a quoted sample that ensures that it matches the population, for example, in terms of age, gender and population density. Finally, in a third step, the results are weighted by other attendees' socio-demographic factors and attitudes to correct distortions and prevent manipulation. More information can be found in the Civey FAQ.
Why is a registration necessary?
The registration helps to weigh the answers, thus allowing a result for the surveys, which is representative of the voting population in Germany. Each participant is asked for their gender, year of birth and place of residence. After that everyone can give their opinion in further surveys on different topics.
How do the results become 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 comprises the population entitled to vote in Germany. The weighting is done fully automatically on the basis of the personal details at the registration as well as the history of earlier answers of a user. More methodological details can be found in the Civey whitepaper.
Will you reach enough participants online?
Opinion polls are usually conducted by phone or online. The significance of the results depends on how many people can be reached and how many actually participate in a survey when they are approached. Internet connections and landline connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - with about 90 percent of households, mobile phones even 95 percent. The willingness to participate in all methods in the single-digit percentage range, especially experts estimate it for telephone surveys.
Thus, in both methods there is a group of people that can not be reached because they either have no connection to the respective network or do not want to participate in the survey. Therefore, a significant number of people must always be approached for a meaningful result. Civey surveys are currently in addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE in more than 20,000 other websites involved, including various media. This ensures that as many populations as possible can be reached.
How do I recognize the quality of a result?
Until the result of a survey becomes representative, enough different people have to participate. Whether this is already successful, makes Civey transparent, in that for each survey result a statistical error probability is specified. The number of participants and the interview time are also published for each survey.
What does it mean when the colored areas in the graphics overlap?
In our graphs, the statistical error is shown as a colored interval. This interval shows the uncertainty associated with a poll score. For example, on the Sunday question, one can not say exactly how many percent a party would get in a poll, but specify an interval where the outcome is likely to be. If the intervals of two survey values overlap, then strictly speaking no statements about the difference can be made. For the Sunday question this means: If the poll numbers of two parties are so close together that overlap their error intervals, it can not be derived from which would currently perform better in the election.
What happens with my data?
The personal data of the users are stored encrypted on German servers and remain secret. Civey employees use only user IDs for reporting and can not associate users with their votes. The main purpose of the users' personal information is to weigh the answers and to ensure that the surveys are not manipulated. To prevent this, Civey uses both statistical and technical methods. In addition, Civey works with external partners who create audiences. Only when users have accepted the privacy policy of both Civey and an external partner, may your responses be used by the Partner to model those audiences. However, a partner does not receive information about your political and religious attitudes as well as those with which you can be identified. Civey users are also not ads based on their answers. You may object to the distribution to partners at any time here as a logged in user. More information about privacy at Civey can be found here.
Who is behind Civey surveys?
At this point, readers in the app and on the mobile / stationary website have the opportunity to participate in a representative Civey survey. Civey is an online opinion research institute based in Berlin. To compile its representative surveys, the software of the company, founded in 2015, merges websites into a nationwide survey network. In addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE include, among other things, the "Tagesspiegel", "World", "Wirtschaftswoche" and "Rheinische Post". Civey was funded by the ProFit funding program of Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Regional Development Fund.
