According to the study conducted for Funke Mediengruppe publisher, 23 percent of Germans consider Schulz a political winner, while 10 percent abstained from answering the question. Among the SPD supporters, 47 percent of those polled consider Schulz as a loser, while 25 percent see him as a winner.
Horst Seehofer, who leads the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is in the second position in the rankings. Sixty-one percent of Germans consider the politician a loser, while 25 percent say Seehofer is a winner.
Merkel, in turn, is the third in the rankings of this year's political losers, with 53 percent of Germans expressing such an opinion about the chancellor. Forty-one percent believe she is a winner.
Among the CDU/CSU supporters, 62 percent of those polled express a positive opinion about Merkel, compared to 33 percent deeming her a political loser. As for Seehofer, he was characterized as a winner by 28 percent of the CDU/CSU supporters, while 59 percent of the respondents expressed a negative opinion about the politician.
Thus, leaders of all the three parties, which seek to create the ruling coalition in Germany, top the political losers rankings.
On the contrary, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier enjoys the public approval, with 65 percent of Germans considering him a political winner, and 19 percent characterizing him as a loser.
Despite an initial refusal to form the so-called grand coalition with the conservative bloc, SPD leader Martin Schulz has stated earlier in December that the party had agreed to start preliminary talks with the CDU/CSU alliance on forming a coalition government. The move took place after CDU/CSU alliance, the Greens, and the FDP have failed to form so-called Jamaica governing coalition, thus putting the German government into a major deadlock.
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The stalemate took place after the country's Chancellor Angela Merkel has failed to form a majority government, the Bavarian leader Horst Seehofer has called a new grand coalition between Merkel's CDU/CSU and the centre-left SPD "the best option for Germany," emphasizing that such a scenario would be "better in any case than 'Jamaica,' new elections or a minority government."
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