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AfD politician Gauland, Höcke, Meuthen (in October 2019)
Photo: M. Popow / imago images / Metodi Popow
Internally, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had already declared the AfD to be a suspected right-wing extremism case last Thursday, according to SPIEGEL information, but did not make this classification public.
The observation of the party as a whole became known on Wednesday through media reports, and SPIEGEL had also reported this.
On this Friday, the Cologne Administrative Court decided that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is not allowed to classify and observe the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case for the time being.
The decision is valid until the conclusion of an urgent procedure on the question.
The background to the current decision is that the classification of the entire AfD had become public, although the protection of the constitution had promised to remain silent until further notice.
The AfD is legally defending itself against the professional attention of the domestic intelligence service.
Before the decision of the administrative court, a survey gave a clear picture of opinion: The vast majority of Germans support the original decision of the constitution protection to declare the AfD to be a suspected right-wing extremism case.
In the survey conducted by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of SPIEGEL, almost 60 percent described the decision as "clearly correct", and 12 percent as "somewhat correct".
On the other hand, 23 percent consider it a mistake.
In no other political camp was support for the decision of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as strong as among supporters of the Greens.
94 percent of those surveyed there stated that they believed the AfD to be a threat to the state as correct.
Among supporters of the SPD, almost 90 percent of those questioned still saw it that way.
Even among supporters of the Union and the left, around three quarters of those surveyed said they supported the decision.
It looked different with the supporters of the FDP.
Here, the majority of those questioned thought the decision was wrong.
Unsurprisingly, the AfD's rejection was the strongest.
93 percent of those surveyed said they kept stepping as a mistake.
Two percent of AfD supporters thought the decision was correct and five percent were undecided.
Looking at the different age groups, it is noticeable that support for the decision by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is highest in the group of people over 65, at 77 percent.
Approval is lowest in the group of 30 to 39 year olds.
But there, too, almost two-thirds believed the constitutional protectors' move was justified.
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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.
Everyone 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 that 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? Up arrow Down arrow
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.
Afterwards everyone can give their opinion in further surveys on different topics.
How are the results representative? Up arrow Down arrow
The response 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 whitepaper.
Can you 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, and mobile phones in as many 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.
With both methods there is therefore 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 in order 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
Before the result of a survey becomes representative, a sufficient number of different people have to take part.
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 evaluations and cannot connect users to their voting.
The users' personal information is used primarily 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 polling institute based in Berlin.
In order to collect its representative surveys, the software of the company, which was 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 Regional Development Fund.
bmo / Reuters