## Which German party has the best answers to the challenges of the future? - a reflection on the general elections

So we had general elections in Germany. I would say, not much of a (great) surprise (at least not to me), despite all the chatter in media and public. I checked some basic stats at https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2021-09-26-BT-DE/index.shtml and one interesting thing stood out there for me.

The response to the question: _Which party has the best answers to the challenges of the future?_, FDP scored only 9% of positive responses.

This question is actually a hidden test for people's perception of how progressive/conservative a party is (has answers to challenges of the future = is future-oriented vs. does not have answers to challenges of the future = is rather backwards looking/status-quo conserving).

No surprise, the Greens are perceived as very progressive (have answers to questions of the future), followed by Socialists and the Christian Democrats. Also not surprisingly, AfD is perceived as a super-conservative party, which is their whole point. But I would not expect FDP to end almost on par with AfD(!) being perceived as so strongly conservative party. After years of trying to look "hip" and young, they are perhaps loosing their mojo? Despite their current relative success in the general elections. Or is it perhaps so that their electorate are young, hip and affluent conservatives? Which would indicate that there are plenty of such in Germany and thus the country is doing quite well overall.