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Surprised with her work, both positively and negatively: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / picture alliance / dpa
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Corona, energy crisis, inflation: 2022 was a turbulent year politically.
Shortly after taking office, the new traffic light coalition had a lot to deal with.
According to the Germans, one politician in particular was positively surprised by her work: Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
This is the result of a recent survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL (read more about the Civey methodology here).
Respondents were able to choose who from a number of top politicians from the opposition and the federal government surprised them most positively in 2022.
26 percent named Baerbock.
AfD leader Alice Weidel took second place with 15 percent, followed by CDU leader Friedrich Merz (11 percent) and Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck (10 percent).
However, around 23 percent also stated that no politician had pleasantly surprised them.
What is remarkable about Baerbock is that her work apparently found approval across party lines.
More than a third of SPD voters and a fifth of Union voters were impressed by the minister's work.
The answers of women and men differ only marginally.
Men tended to state somewhat more frequently that they had been positively surprised.
This difference is most evident in Baerbock.
Women, on the other hand, more often opted for the option that no one pleasantly surprised them.
Apparently, the assessments of some politicians differ greatly.
When asked who surprised them most negatively in 2022, 18 percent named Habeck.
Merz is also among the top four again, this time with 16 percent.
This is followed again by Baerbock (15 percent) and SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz (13 percent).
Also with regard to the negative surprises, women and men gave similar answers.
A somewhat clearer difference can only be seen with Baerbock: 17 percent of women found it a negative surprise, among men it was 13 percent.
Incidentally, only a small proportion of Germans apparently experienced no negative surprises at all in politics in 2022: Only five percent stated that none of the people named had surprised them negatively.
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