What are the most important topics for Germany at these elections?

There are two main issues. One is the full-scale war in Ukraine and the different parties' different stances on that. The second would be the competence of the government and how represented people in Germany feel by their current government.

There are other things about the cost of living, about energy prices, about the green transition and so on. But those two are the primary issues.

How strong is support for Ukraine in Germany and how often do you hear that our own people should be prioritized instead?

What we do see is a diversity of positions from the different political parties. We can see that the current main governing party, the Social Democrats – the SPD – led by Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz, who has been very prominent on the Euro election campaign billboards. They claim to secure peace. But of course, we don't have peace. We need to restore peace by winning the war. That's something that Olaf Scholz has not committed to and it's something that his party has not committed to. So that message really rings false, it has to be said. It's part of the positioning of the SPD as a so-called peace party and the chancellor as a peace chancellor. Under what conditions could peace be secured other than victory, it hasn't been clearly explained.

So this is a rather incredible message that is playing to the left wing of the Social Democratic Party, and is aimed to cut off the threat to the Social Democrats from the further left parties of the list of Sahra Wagenknecht and the Linker, but also to appeal to voters of the AFD, the Alternative for Deutschland, who along with Linker and Wagenknecht have the same position of appeasing Russia and not supporting Ukraine.

For the other parties, it's much more clear.

The Free Democratic Party have positioned themselves as fighters with the candidacy of Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann as their spitzenkandidaten or lead candidate.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have been very clear on security and prosperity in Europe.

The Greens have a very strong message that only democracy gives you freedom, so defending democracy, restoring democracy, and renewing democracy are at the heart of those messages there.

So there is a broad sway of different approaches.

In terms of public support, it's usually the case that around one-third of Germans want their country to do more for Ukraine. It's also the case that about one-third want Germany to do less for Ukraine. So the middle third is what is up for grabs. Those are the swing voters at any one time, and they are heavily influenced by the discourse coming from their leaders as well as from experts in the media. So that's where the real battleground lies.

The AFD has also been quite a big topic during this election. On the one hand, it is a very popular party, on the other, it is called undemocratic and there are several lawsuits against them. What does this say about democracy in Germany?

Well, I would agree that the AfD are not a democratic party. They're also heavily infiltrated by both Russian and Chinese influence. We should be under no illusion that they are a Trojan horse for others, but they do also represent domestic discontent with the state of Germany's democracy, and this is to do with the competence of government.

At the moment, the government is really not functioning well. It's a dysfunctional coalition. The three parties are constantly fighting with each other, you get different answers to the same question coming from different ministries, even ministries controlled by the same party. There is a real feeling among Germany's people, including in some focus groups that we've recently been running, that they're not being well served by their government. And so that is something that gives rise to these anti-establishment and disruptive parties.

What they promise is actually, I think, probably less important than the fact they are disruptive and want to give a bloody nose to some of the traditional ruling parties, to give them a wake-up call. Now of course that could be extremely dangerous if that grows into a really anti-democratic movement and it's something that I don't actually think Germany's leaders or the main coalition parties or the opposition CDU are properly addressing at the moment.

You said the government is not meeting expectations, but where does this dissatisfaction come from?

It's broad. I think there is dissatisfaction among some people that there's not a clear goal for the war there seems to be neither this nor that and no clear direction for the country more widely.

There also seems to be an impasse between how to deal with migration. The parties are really at loggerheads about how to actually deal with that with two extreme views being unable to come to a reasonable conversation somewhere in the middle about the costs, the benefits of migration and the kind of migration that Germans actually want to have. Instead, it's a very ideological debate, a similar thing with culture wars that are going on.

But overall, I think it's this sense of Germany in decline and a futureless Germany or at least not a better future to look forward to.

I think that's something that Germany's politicians really need to wrestle with, and to give their population a very clear sense that they have a better future in Germany and that they are part of that society that will deliver better for them. That's what's clearly missing at the moment.

This is partly because politicians don't have a strategic approach. There's a real strategic deficit, which means that we're unable to link the issues together in a proper way and come up with a clear vision for where we want to be and a strategy to get there to solve these problems in a coordinated way.

Instead, what we see is policies running against each other. So geo-economics, Germany's trade model, running up against its security or its geopolitics, or another one it's energy policy against its geopolitics the dependency on Russia and so on.

And lastly, what to do about the green transition, how to manage that in a way that plays to both Germany's security as well as its prosperity. At the moment, Germany's leaders don't have the answer to that.

And so it's much easier for these disruptive parties to offer an alternative message that is way too simple, that does not address any of those issues, but is something different and something clear for people to get hold of.

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