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A sign in Leipzig indicates that a mask is required: voices for an extension of the shutdown are getting louder
Photo: Jan Woitas / dpa
Because of the corona pandemic, people in Germany must expect restrictions beyond January 10th.
Already at the weekend it became clear that the measures that had been in effect until then would remain in place for the time being.
And before the meeting of the prime ministers with Chancellor Merkel on Tuesday, several country leaders are campaigning for an extension of another three weeks until the end of January - among other things because of a virus mutation, which increases the risk of infection.
A recent SPIEGEL survey now shows: A clear majority of the population is in favor of maintaining the shutdown beyond January 10th.
In a survey by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of SPIEGEL, a total of 70 percent of those questioned said they would "definitely" or "more or less" support such an extension.
Only just under a quarter of those surveyed are against it.
The approval of voters from the Union, SPD and Greens is particularly high.
A good 80 percent of them are in favor of a longer shutdown.
On the other hand, he finds the least approval among AfD supporters - here the supporters make up only about 21 percent.
Otherwise, those who find an extension good are only in the minority among FDP supporters.
A breakdown according to different age groups shows that consent to an extension is highest among people aged 50 and over.
In the group aged 65 and over, around 80 percent are in favor of maintaining the existing measures beyond January 10th.
If you break down the survey results according to who has children in their household and who doesn't, it becomes clear that people with children in the household are more critical of an extension than people who live without children in the household.
The survey also makes it clear that the question of extending the measures is polarizing: across all age groups and across all parties, the proportion of undecided is less than 10 percent.
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How does the Civey methodology 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 surveyed.
Anyone can take part in the surveys online and their answers will be included in the representative result, provided they have registered.
Civey draws a quoted sample from these users, which ensures that they correspond 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? Up arrow Down arrow
The registration helps to weight the answers and thus enables a result for the polls 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? Up arrow Down arrow
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 fully automated 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? Up arrow Down arrow
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 rate them as 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? Up arrow Down arrow
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? Up arrow Down arrow
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 to my data? Up arrow Down arrow
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? Up arrow Down arrow
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 the »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.
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