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CDU party leader Friedrich Merz at a Bundestag session
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Kay Nietfeld / dpa
Who is best suited to be Chancellor?
In August, Robert Habeck (Greens) was still clearly ahead of CDU party leader Friedrich Merz and incumbent Olaf Scholz (SPD) on this issue.
But now the picture has changed significantly.
This is the result of a representative survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL.
A month ago, 23 percent of those surveyed thought Habeck was best suited as chancellor, but now it's only 15 percent.
On the other hand, Merz is growing significantly.
22 percent now consider him the most suitable person to lead the federal government.
That is five percentage points more than in the last survey.
(Read the background to the Civey methodology here).
Habeck and Merz have swapped places.
Scholz continues in third place.
Twelve percent consider him the most suitable chancellor.
Scholz is again on par with CSU boss Markus Söder.
Both have lost one percentage point compared to the last survey.
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It stands to reason that the traffic light coalition's handling of the energy crisis could have had an impact on the changed popularity ratings.
With the controversial gas levy, Habeck wanted to react to rising gas costs.
Instead of using taxpayers' money to save companies that are threatened by Russia's gas import ban, gas customers should share in the costs - after all, the Ministry of Finance did not want to relax the debt brake.
In the meantime, however, the concept of the gas surcharge is on the verge of being phased out.
On the other hand, all coalition parties are in favor of a gas price brake.
Even Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) can now warm to the measure.
Incidentally, only three percent of the FDP leader believe that he is best suited as chancellor.
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