The Minister of Transport was sure of his cause. "We have far more outstanding tasks than putting this highly emotional topic over and over again in the shop window - for which there are no majorities at all," said Andreas Scheuer in view of the current discussion about a speed limit on motorways.
The CSU politician is undoubtedly right that the question in the driver country Germany is highly emotional. And the fact that there is currently no majority in the Bundestag for a speed limit only became apparent in October, when the parliament with a clear majority rejected a corresponding request by the Greens.
But things look different in the population. This is the result of a recent survey by the polling institute Civey. This shows broad support for a general top speed on motorways.
40 percent of respondents for speed limit 130
In the survey, only about every third respondent (31.1 percent) spoke out against a speed limit. By contrast, a good two thirds of the participants were for a binding top speed. There is disagreement in the answer to the question of where the maximum speed limit should be.
- Most support (40.0 percent) found a permissible top speed of 130 kilometers per hour.
- 11.7 percent of those surveyed voted for a speed limit of more than 130 kilometers per hour - almost as many were in favor of allowing a maximum speed of 120 on highways (11.2 percent).
- A lower speed limit, on the other hand, was hardly popular: only 2.5 or 1.7 percent of the respondents were in favor of a speed of 110 or less.
Civey interviewed more than 3,000 people for the survey from November 26 to December 26. The fault tolerance is 2.7 percent.
There is no speed limit on most motorway sections in Germany - this applies to around 70 percent of the routes. According to the Federal Highway Research Institute, there are permanent or temporary restrictions on 20.8 percent of motorways. The most common are Tempo 120 (7.8 percent) and Tempo 100 (5.6 percent). There are also variable traffic control displays. Regardless of this, a recommended guideline speed of 130 has been in effect for more than 40 years.
This means that Germany is not only exotic within Europe. According to ADAC, there are speed limits everywhere else in the European Union. The Netherlands, for example, had decided to set a 100 speed limit for highways in mid-November to minimize nitrogen oxide emissions (read a comment on this here).
The dispute in Germany is far from over. The SPD wants to address the speed limit in the coalition, Scheuer rejects that. The SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken, however, insisted on corresponding talks.
How does the Civey methodology work?
The polling institute Civey works with a multi-stage, fully automated process. All representative real-time surveys are carried out in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites ("riversampling"), so not only SPIEGEL ONLINE users are surveyed. Anyone can take part in the surveys online and their answers will be included in the representative result if they have registered. Civey draws a quoted sample from these users, which ensures that it corresponds, for example, to the population in terms of age, gender and population density. 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. You can find further information in the Civey FAQ.
Why is registration necessary?
The registration helps to weight the answers and thus enables a result for the polls that is representative of the electorate in Germany. Each participant is asked about their gender, year of birth and place of residence. After that, 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 is done fully automatically on the basis of the personal information when registering and the history of previous responses from a user. Further details on the methodology can be found in the Civey white paper.
Can you reach enough participants online?
Opinion polls are usually conducted over the phone or online. The significance of the results depends on how many people can be reached and how many actually take part in a survey if they are addressed. Internet connections and landline connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - in around 90 percent of households, cell phones in as much as 95 percent. The willingness to participate in all methods is in the single-digit percentage range, experts rate them 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 participate in the survey. That is why a lot of people have to be addressed for a meaningful result. In addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE, Civey surveys are currently integrated into more than 20,000 other websites, including various media. This ensures that as far as possible all population groups can be reached.
How do I know the goodness of a result?
Before the results of a survey become representative, enough different people have to take part. Civey makes it clear whether this has already been achieved by stating 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 if 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, the Sunday question cannot be said exactly what percentage a party would get in an election, but it is possible to specify an interval in which the result will very 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 that if the survey values of two parties are so close together 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 stored encrypted on German servers and remain secret. Civey employees only work with user IDs for the evaluations and cannot connect the users to their coordination. The personal information of the users 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. Only if users have accepted the data protection declaration from Civey as well as from an external partner can your answers be used by the partner to model these target groups. 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 advertised based on their answers. As a logged-in user, you can object to the transfer to partners at any time here. More information on data protection at Civey can be found here.
Who is behind Civey surveys?
At this point, readers in the app and on the mobile / stationary website can take part in a representative Civey survey. Civey is an online polling institute based in Berlin. In order to collect its representative surveys, the software of the company founded in 2015 connects websites to a nationwide survey network. In addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE, the "Tagesspiegel", "Welt", "Wirtschaftswoche" and "Rheinische Post" are among them. Civey was funded by the ProFit funding program of the Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Fund for Regional Development.