This paper examines the dynamics of political trust in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. Political trust is crucial for maintaining societal cohesion during crises, as it influences how citizens view their government’s actions in uncertain times. This research extends the understanding of political trust by highlighting its relational and situational characteristics. I analyze the rally-around-the-flag effect of the pandemic on political trust that previous research has found, breaking it down for specific political parties and two domains of trust – trust in parties to handle the pandemic and climate change. I use data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey (CILS4EU), where a survey experiment varying question order was implemented (N=3,164). One group first answered questions about the pandemic and then about climate change, the other group in the reverse order. Presenting COVID-19-related questions first seemed to heighten the respondents’ sense of urgency, leading to higher trust in governing parties to handle the pandemic, but not in opposition parties. One of the two governing parties was also evaluated as more competent to handle climate change if COVID-19 was more salient compared to climate change. This implies that there might be some limited “spillover” of the rally-around-the-flag effect to other domains than the immediate crisis. Making climate change more salient by placing it first did not affect trust in parties to handle climate change.
