Merkel’s popularity has waned since migrants started arriving in large numbers last summer.
The survey was conducted by pollster Forschungsgruppe Wahlen for broadcaster ZDF and found 58 per cent of Germans see refugees and integration as the most important problems Germany is facing.
The finding also means that ordinary Germans no longer fully trust the established media to inform them, because all corporate and government media outlets in Germany are pro-immigration.
This growing distrust was particularly exposed by the recent rape and murder of a medical student in Freiburg in October by a migrant. Knowing that this was an explosive topic after the media and authorities had censored the number of sexual abuses in Cologne during New Year, the country’s leading public broadcaster, ARD tried to bury the news item in the local pages.
Beyond a few tabloids, the rape and murder was intentionally hidden from national headlines. Only after political figures weighed in on the fierce debate over the terrible crime, the story, which had not met the threshold for national news, became a main news story. By then it was already too late for the Merkel coalition to do the neccessary damage control.
Over the past week, leftists, politicians and journalists have tried to salvage their crumbling authority by the ususal moral grandstanding because the German public dared to believe a crime committed by a migrant is of national interest and importance.
But despite their best efforts, more than half of Germans see refugees and integration as the country’s biggest problem. The shock findings also come despite the number of newcomers into the country slowing down.
A record number of Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere arrived in Europe’s largest economy in 2015, prompting concerns about security and integration and giving rise to terms such as “rapefugees” after the Cologne mass assaults against women. For that reason Merkel expects next year’s federal election, in which she plans to run for a fourth term, to be “tough like no other”.
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