Climate protection and party preference: agreement on the issue, differences on the measures

Prior to the 2021 Bundestag election, SINUS-Institut and the German Economic Institute (Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft – IW) jointly conducted a survey on political sentiment in various subject areas.

A clear majority of voters assign very high importance to climate protection measures. At the same time, the specifics of the measures show potential for conflict in future coalition negotiations. While more than two-thirds of Green Party supporters consider the loss of industrial jobs in the course of climate protection “acceptable”, 65% of FDP supporters are not prepared to accept this trade.

To understand even more precisely what moves the population with regard to future challenges, the Sinus-Milieus approach was integrated into a short study as a further explanatory perspective.

Environmental conservation and climate protection are fundamentally relevant for all parts of society. However, with regard to the respective consequences of action and demands on the state and the economy, a line of conflict within society emerges. This can be seen as a socio-cultural fault line along which the willingness to accept tradeoffs inherent in fundamental transformations can be read.

On the one hand, it is clear that “sustainability thinking” is becoming more widespread in society: climate policy has long since ceased to be the monopoly of the "post-materialist" milieus. At the same time, the topic causes uncertainty in the middle-class and traditional milieus, and is rejected outright by some parts of the hedonistic and precarious milieus. In all these milieus, the focus is on securing the basis of their own material existence.