Bad news for Germany’s left-green coalition government: research finds a clear majority of Germans would rather the state just got on with fixing potholes, and building new roads so they can drive their cars more.
Polling for one of Germany’s major newspapers has found strong feelings among German voters on government policy, showing a strong deviation from the aspirations of the influential coalition partner the Greens Party in the land of the Autobahn.
When asked which route they would prefer the government to take, 62 per cent of Germans said they wanted to see “renewal and further expansion of the motorway and road network”, an obvious rejection of the present zeitgeist for spreading limits on road access through congestion charges and road taxes. A big majority also said they preferred petrol and diesel cars to electric.
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Just 33 per cent, in comparison, said repairing the roads that already exist and building new ones “should be avoided in favor of environmental and climate protection” reports Die Welt, citing research performed for them by a pollster. While approval for expanding roads rather than curbing road building for the environment varied by region and age, every demographic category still showed majority support.
The least-likely to support roads over the environment were the inhabitants of regional cities, where a slim majority of 51 per cent said they agreed with the statement. The only political group that supported the environment over roads — perhaps unsurprisingly — were followers of the Green Party.
DW also reports the finding that a major majority of Germans are not interested in electric cars. Per the survey, just 33 per cent said the age of internal combustion engines was over, and 72 per cent said they’d rather have a conventional engine over electric.
The research comes after, as previously reported, slumping polling support for the Greens in Germany. By April, after a tough winter where energy prices soared as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Germany’s increasingly ‘green’ electricity infrastructure unable to take up the slack it was found support for the Greens has fallen to a 14-month low.