According to a survey, most people in Germany believe that society is divided on many issues. Only 17 percent believe that there is a broad consensus. This is the result of a representative survey by the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy on behalf of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. The respondents found the topics of dealing with the corona pandemic (78 percent), immigration (65 percent) and support for Ukraine in the fight against Russia (56 percent) to be particularly controversial.
The topics of gender-sensitive language (39 percent), church (28 percent) and abortion (27 percent) are judged to be less controversial.
According to Allensbach, the decisive factor for the stability of a democracy is how many people feel that representatives of different views are irreconcilably opposed to one another. 49 percent of the population are convinced, in East Germany 57 percent.
At the same time, East Germans have less of the impression of living in a tolerant society than West Germans: 26 percent of West Germans, but only nine percent of East Germans, perceive society as such. The circle that finds it difficult to be friends with someone who disagrees has grown from 29 percent to 42 percent in just under a decade, it said.
According to the information, the image of society is more marked by controversy than people’s personal experiences. Although only a few think that there is a broad consensus on many issues in Germany, the majority is convinced that most people think like themselves. Only supporters of the AfD and the limited left see their positions as a minority and outsiders .
When it comes to the Ukraine war, people in East and West Germany come to very different conclusions. The opinion institute Forsa determined this in various questions about the war. The surveys of the past few months on the Ukraine war and its consequences revealed a gap in the attitudes between East and West Germans that has hardly been observed on any other topic – not even when dealing with the corona pandemic, writes the Institute.
In eastern Germany, significantly more respondents than in the west of the country are of the opinion that the federal government is not doing too little but “too much” to support Ukraine (34 percent). In West Germany, only around one in five people share this opinion (18 percent).
By far the greatest differences between East and West can be seen in the issue of arms deliveries. While a more or less large majority of West Germans (between 54 and 61 percent) have supported the delivery of heavy weapons by Germany in all surveys since the beginning of May, according to Forsa only a minority of East Germans support the delivery of such weapons to Ukraine decided by the federal government (32 percent on average)
While the difference between those who consider Germany’s general commitment to Ukraine to be exaggerated already averages 16 percentage points between East and West, the difference between those in favor of arms deliveries in East and West is even 26 percentage points on average .
