On March 4, the Paralympic Winter Games will kick off in Beijing, barely two weeks after the end of the Winter Olympics. According to a recent survey by YouGov in cooperation with Statista, 72 percent of people in Germany say that the Paralympics can help break down prejudice against people with physical disabilities. Just over two in three Germans (68 percent) think that both the Olympic and the Paralympic Games are important for international understanding and friendship between countries (note: Russian and Belarusian athletes were just excluded from the Paralympics because of the Ukraine conflict). 61 percent say they pay even more respect to Paralympic athletes than Olympic athletes. However, 70 percent of Germans have no interest in the Paralympics – 74 percent of women vs. 67 percent of men. On the other hand, 15 percent of all respondents want to follow the Games through summaries in print, TV or on the Internet, 9 percent on live TV, 4 percent on live stream and 2 percent on live tickers.
While only 6 percent of respondents consider the Paralympic Games to be more interesting than the Olympics, just under one in four (23 percent) say that the competitions for athletes with physical disabilities are less interesting to them than the Olympics. More than half of the German respondents find the Paralympics equally interesting or uninteresting (55 percent). Men are clearly more often pro Olympics on this question: 30 percent among them find the Paralympics less interesting than the Olympics (vs. 16 percent of women).
Based on the YouGov Omnibus, 2,025 people in Germany were surveyed from Feb. 21-23, 2022, using standardized online interviews. The results are weighted and representative of the German population aged 18 and over.
