This past week, I noted that the public-run network here in Germany....ZDF....put one of their political chat shows into a polling situation over immigration and the favorability rating. "Politbarometer" typically does only political surveys and notes where where political parties stand or certain key issues reside with the public. According to the commentary, they went out to roughly 2,000 people and the come-back was eighty-percent of the German nation area friendly toward immigration and refugees, with twenty-percent negative with the current situation.
Typically, at least with politics....Politbarometer is fairly close when elections occur. If they say the SPD will get X-number of votes in a national election....it's usually within a point of being correct. So they rarely screw up on surveys.
In this case? I might be curious how they worded the questions, but maybe they are correct.
The problem is that you continually see the journalists from both public-run networks (ARD and ZDF) on a pro-refugee and pro-immigration 'rant'. I hate to use the word "cheer-leader", but it fits into their acting job for the past couple of months.
So, are there eighty percent in favor? I would have some doubts. Most people are asking more questions, and there's element of the nation wondering where exactly the momentum starts to decrease. While the gov't now talks continually of roughly 800,000 to 850,000 refugees and immigrants coming in 2015, the realistic amount is closer to one-million (the forbidden number to mention if you work for the German gov't). What of 2016? The news media and political players absolutely refuse to allow this to come up in public discussion. Another one million in 2016? It's possible.
This might explain the urgent nature of this big EU meeting in October and why they want some big changes. Getting other EU members to accept more immigrants? Unless Germany is going to "pay" them something, I don't see many EU members wanting to take on more immigrants.
My gut feeling is that it's closer to a fifty-fifty mix on the immigration and refugee situation in Germany. The Politbarometer survey might have been cherry-picking on their questions and led some people to different conclusion.
Why all this matters? The fall of 2017 is the next national election, and if it's based on the refugee-immigration episode as the top subject....it'll invite a major change in voting patterns.
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