A recent survey by the Forsa Institute, commissioned by the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland”, found that nearly two-thirds of voters believe that political parties lack the ability and willingness to compromise. The survey, which polled 1,002 people on January 27 and 28, 2025, found that only 30% of respondents thought that parties were sufficiently willing to make concessions.
The desire for more compromise was particularly strong among workers, self-employed individuals and employees, with 80%, 72% and 69% of respondents in these groups, respectively, expressing this view. In contrast, a majority of civil servants (51%) believed that parties were already sufficiently willing to make compromises.
The survey also found that supporters of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) were most critical of the parties’ willingness to compromise, with 92% of respondents in this group expressing this view. This was followed by supporters of the Free Social Union (BSW), the Left, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who all expressed a desire for more compromise at rates of 72%, 66%, 66% and 65%, respectively.
In contrast, supporters of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens were more divided, with a slight majority of those in the SPD’s camp believing that parties were already sufficiently willing to make compromises, while a slight majority of those in the Greens’ camp believed the opposite.
The survey also found that a clear majority of voters, 55%, believed that politics needed to be more focused on the interests of the middle ground, with only 27% of respondents believing that the political middle was already being adequately represented.