The trust is gone!

Turquoise-green “succeeds” in a historic belly flop

Flying high and falling low: Werner Kogler (Greens) and Karl Nehammer (ÖVP)(Bild: APA/EVA MANHART)

It is an unprecedented fall: Never since the APA/OGM Confidence Index was launched in 2003 has a government had such weak ratings as the outgoing one made up of the ÖVP and the Greens. The reasons for this lie primarily in the crises of recent years.

In August, the turquoise-green members of government only scored an average of minus 13.3 points. Both the initial high in 2020 and the subsequent crash were record-breaking. "Never before have we seen such a rollercoaster ride within a government term," says OGM Data Scientist Johannes Klotz.

Record followed hard crash
The confidence curve of the current turquoise-green coalition is doubly unusual. Right after the start, it experienced an unprecedented high.

The historic crash as a graph:

At the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, the ÖVP was well above 40% in the Sunday poll and the government also achieved a new high of 19.5 points in the confidence index in March 2020.

However, the steep rise was followed by an equally rapid fall: the confidence values tipped into negative territory as early as 2021. In April 2023, the confidence index for members of the government registered an all-time low of minus 16.3 points.

What are the reasons?
According to OGM CEO Wolfgang Bachmayer, in addition to the debates about coronavirus management (keyword: compulsory vaccination) and the inflation crisis, the numerous committees of inquiry, which had damaged the reputation of politics as a whole, were also decisive for the decline. It was only after the EU elections that the government saw a slight upward trend.

The opposition was unable to benefit from the government's fall in the confidence index. However, positive trust ratings are not a must, especially for opposition politicians, as the example of Herbert Kickl shows. The FPÖ leader is regularly in the lowest range, with scores above minus 40. Despite this, his party has been in first place in the election polls for a year and a half.

The latest "Krone" poll sees the FPÖ just ahead:

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/stock.adobe.com)

Only Sobotka worse than Kickl
OGM data specialist Klotz explains how this works: "Kickl enjoys an extremely high level of trust among his own voters and very little among other groups." There was only one politician behind Kickl in the trust index - namely ÖVP National Council President Wolfgang Sobotka with minus 50 points.