The fact that Scholz ever had any support at all was due to him somehow being the least off-putting option to the average German before the last election, which was basically a three-way battle between him, Annalena Baerbock from the Greens who is now minister of foreign affairs, and Armin Laschet who is now back to his old self, being a man-sized talking potato. The 2021 election is the point where the graph sets in, if it would start earlier you could also see how the rise of Scholz to relative popularity coincided with the rightwing smear campaign against Baerbock and with how Baerbock and Laschet made complete asses out of themselves whenever they had the chance to speak in public. After people were no longer forced to see Scholz as the lesser evil, his complete robotic blandness turned from an asset into a liability and his popularity sank to levels slightly less abysmal than the SPD's overall popularity.
The fact that Scholz ever had any support at all was due to him somehow being the least off-putting option to the average German before the last election, which was basically a three-way battle between him, Annalena Baerbock from the Greens who is now minister of foreign affairs, and Armin Laschet who is now back to his old self, being a man-sized talking potato. The 2021 election is the point where the graph sets in, if it would start earlier you could also see how the rise of Scholz to relative popularity coincided with the rightwing smear campaign against Baerbock and with how Baerbock and Laschet made complete asses out of themselves whenever they had the chance to speak in public. After people were no longer forced to see Scholz as the lesser evil, his complete robotic blandness turned from an asset into a liability and his popularity sank to levels slightly less abysmal than the SPD's overall popularity.