A recent surge in survey-based scholarship has shed new light on public attitudes toward nuclear weapons. Yet, we still know little about how these public attitudes differ from those of political elites. To address this gap, we conducted an original survey on a large representative sample of German citizens and on a unique elite sample of German parliamentarians. In the survey, we asked the respondents about their views on different aspects of NATO's nuclear sharing practice. We found support for several hypotheses concerning nuclear use, extended deterrence, withdrawal of forward-deployed weapons, and the feasibility of global nuclear disarmament. As such, we provide systematic empirical evidence that there are, indeed, important gaps in public and elite attitudes toward nuclear weapons. Our findings underscore the argument that scholars should survey both political elites and the general public to obtain a comprehensive picture of attitudes toward pertinent questions in our field.

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精英-公众对核武器态度的差距：来自德国公民和议员调查的新证据

最近以调查为基础的学术研究激增，为公众对核武器的态度提供了新的启示。然而，对于这些公众态度与政治精英的态度有何不同，我们仍然知之甚少。为了解决这一差距，我们对大量具有代表性的德国公民样本和独特的德国议员精英样本进行了原始调查。在调查中，我们询问了受访者对北约核共享实践不同方面的看法。我们找到了一些关于核使用、扩大威慑、撤出前沿部署武器以及全球核裁军可行性的假设的支持。因此，我们提供了系统的经验证据，证明公众和精英对核武器的态度确实存在重大差距。