Despite much criticism It is now clear how many Germans agree with Merz's "cityscape" statement
The Chancellor has had to take a lot of criticism for his statements about migrants in public places. Now there is a survey of public opinion - and many people apparently agree with him.
24.10.2025, 11:31
dpa
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- According to the ZDF Politbarometer, 63% of respondents think that Merz is right with his statements on migrants in public spaces.
- Younger people take a more critical view - approval comes mainly from the over 35s.
- Despite the debate, two thirds of Germans feel safe in public places.
According to a survey, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz has received overwhelming support from the population for his controversial comments about the "cityscape" and migrants in Germany. The question of whether the CDU chairman was right with his statement was answered in the affirmative by 63% of respondents in the ZDF Politbarometer, with 29% answering in the negative. Significantly more older than younger people agreed with the Chancellor. In the 18 to 34 age group, only 42% answered yes, compared to 70% of 35 to 59-year-olds and 66% of people aged 60 and over.
Merz had said that the German government was correcting previous failures in migration policy and making progress, "but of course we still have this problem in the cityscape, and that is why the Federal Minister of the Interior is now also in the process of facilitating and carrying out repatriations on a very large scale".
He later added: "Ask your daughters what I might have meant by that." On Wednesday, he then specified that problems would be caused by migrants who did not have permanent residence status, did not work and did not abide by the rules that apply in Germany.
Majority feel safe in public places
In the ZDF Politbarometer, more than two thirds of respondents said that they felt very safe (20%) or fairly safe (46%) in public places. According to the survey, 25 percent feel rather unsafe and 8 percent feel very unsafe. There are only slight differences between men and women.
According to only 18% of respondents, there are problems with refugees in their own neighborhood. 74 percent stated that there were not so many problems or none at all.
The Mannheim-based Forschungsgruppe Wahlen surveyed 1,038 eligible voters on October 23 for the ZDF political barometer on the topic.
