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Health Minister Jens Spahn becomes a loser in the crisis
Photo: Fabian Sommer / dpa
The third wave of infections has started in Germany, the corona crisis is heading towards a new, negative climax.
The federal government and its members, who received a leap of faith in the fight against the pandemic last year, are becoming increasingly unpopular.
No member of the government is currently losing as much in popularity as Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU).
This is shown by a current analysis by the SPIEGEL government monitor.
In December Spahn was in second place behind Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and was traded as a possible candidate for Chancellor.
Now he only comes in 6th place.
Despite the EU Commission's unsuccessful vaccine purchasing policy, Spahn initially promised to be able to offer every citizen a vaccination offer by the end of the second quarter.
He had to correct himself, the government is currently assuming the end of September.
Then Spahn promised free quick tests for everyone from March 1st - here too he had to row back shortly afterwards.
In addition, Spahn is under criticism these days.
On Friday, SPIEGEL reported on an entrepreneurial dinner that Spahn attended at the end of October, even though he had recently warned against private get-togethers.
According to the government monitor, 40 percent of Germans are "very dissatisfied" with Spahn's actions, 17 percent are "somewhat dissatisfied".
"Rather satisfied" is still around a quarter, but only 8 percent are "very satisfied".
Spahn has lost 65 points compared to December.
The SPIEGEL government monitor, in cooperation with the opinion research institute Civey, measures the satisfaction of the population with the government, the coalition parties and, above all, with the individual ministers and the chancellor.
In order to be able to compare the representative evaluations, Civey works with a scoring procedure.
(Read more about the procedure here.) The best possible index is 200, the weakest result would be -200.
Spahn is not only losing popularity in the government monitor.
According to another survey, 54 percent of citizens think that Spahn is "not acting sovereignly" during the corona crisis.
Among CDU / CSU supporters, 39 percent of those questioned see the health minister as "sovereign", among Green supporters, at least 20 percent think so.
Satisfaction with the work of the government fell 45 points to a value of -34.
In addition, none of the cabinet members still achieved a positive index value, as was the case with Merkel and Spahn in December.
The Chancellor is still in first place, but instead of 41 points, she is now -2 and has lost 43 points.
Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) is perceived surprisingly positively.
It also only achieved a value of -22, but it moved up from 5th place to 2nd place.
In the past few weeks he had campaigned for a global vaccination strategy that must also include the countries of the Global South.
The three SPD ministers are on ranks 3, 4 and 5: Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
But the Chancellor candidate Scholz has also lost popularity compared to December, losing 33 points.
Family Minister Franziska Giffey (SPD) continues to land in 7th place in the overall ranking, but has lost approval compared to December and has lost 17 points.
Giffey will run as the top candidate of the SPD in Berlin in the House of Representatives election in September, she wants to move into the Red City Hall as governing mayor.
Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier has also deteriorated.
He slips from rank 9 to rank 10 and loses 28 points.
Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) remains at the bottom, his index value has deteriorated from -152 to -157 compared to December.
The transport minister has been criticized for months, mainly because of the toll debacle.
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