Germany’s Merz girds for a post-election fight for political survival
BERLIN — Chancellor Friedrich Merz is bracing for a fresh barrage of bad news that is expected to intensify questions about his capacity to remain Germany’s leader when results of two regional elections come in on Sunday.
Merz already appears to be preparing for a fight for his political survival ahead of the votes, knowing full well that his chancellorship could rapidly unravel should he fail to rally the increasingly restive rank-and-file of his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) behind him.
That will be no small task following the CDU’s crushing defeat to the far-right Alternative for Germany party in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month. The CDU risks another major loss this Sunday in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where according to polls the conservative party is set to suffer its worst defeat in a state or national election in Germany’s post-World War II history.
It’s for this reason that Merz has arranged a meeting with CDU leaders to take place Sunday, just before polls close, at which he’s expected to gauge their support and attempt to convince them that he has a plan to turn things around. Merz has also canceled a planned speech at the United Nations General Assembly scheduled for Wednesday to remain in Berlin and address the domestic fallout from the CDU’s performance.
In an effort to rally support, Merz is emphasizing the importance of avoiding turbulence in Berlin during volatile times for Europe.
“All eyes are on Germany, on Berlin, on our role in the world,” Merz said at a CDU campaign event in Berlin on Thursday evening. “Expectations are placed on us to contribute to keeping this European continent stable.”
‘Hell breaks loose’
Despite his efforts to remain at the helm, Merz’s fate could be sealed by as little as a few percentage point shifts on Sunday in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Polls show Merz’s conservatives collapsing to just 7% in the state, as its center-left premier takes on the leading AfD in an increasingly two-way contest between the strongest centrist force and the far right.
Should the CDU fall further, it would put the party at risk of failing to meet the 5% vote threshold required to enter the state parliament — a result that one conservative official, speaking on condition of anonymity to frankly discuss the mood inside the party, said would mean “all hell breaks loose.”
In Berlin, where the other regional election will be held this Sunday, the chancellor’s party is polling better — but things could still go poorly. The CDU is narrowly trailing the far-left Die Linke, or Left Party, at around 20% support, according to polls. That is still 8 percentage points below the CDU’s result in the last Berlin election — a decline that could see the conservatives ousted from the city government they currently lead and replaced by a coalition of left-wing parties.
In an effort to quell open rebellion in his party that could come with these bad outcomes, Merz has pushed to line up support in advance of the elections, with some success.
On Wednesday, all eight CDU state premiers released a public letter backing the chancellor and emphasizing, like Merz, the need for a stable German government given Europe’s increasingly volatile politics. Among the signatories was Hendrik Wüst, the premier of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the politician who has emerged as Merz’s most likely replacement.
“Our country will continue to need a stable and effective federal government with its own majority in the Bundestag,” the statement read. “Parliamentary elections will be held next year in Poland, Italy, Spain, and Greece, and presidential elections will take place in France. The outcomes are uncertain. This makes a stable and strong Germany in a united Europe all the more crucial.”
‘Connect more deeply with people’
Merz has already begun to show some nascent signs of how he will attempt to address his core problem: improving his approval ratings with voters, which at this point in his tenure are some of the lowest for any chancellor in Germany’s postwar history.
Merz, in short, appears to be giving in to more of what voters want even as he calls on them to sacrifice benefits as part of his reform drive to make pension, health insurance and long-term care schemes more sustainable.
Merz this week suggested he’s ready to yield to long-standing demands from state premiers to address soaring fuel costs — with diesel reaching a record €2.453 per liter on Thursday, up more than 50% from a year ago — after long opposing measures to bring down prices as too expensive. He has also softened his position on restricting early retirement for people who have worked and paid into the pension system for 45 years.
Merz, who has often taken a scolding tone with voters, has already admitted he needs to sound less like a taskmaster. “We must try — myself included — to connect more deeply with people, including their full range of emotions,” he said the day after his party’s defeat in Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month.
The shift is slight, and in no way represents a retreat from Merz’s reform drive, which Merz, during the CDU campaign event on Thursday evening, compared in its importance to the effort to rebuild Germany after World War II.
For many conservatives, Merz’s minor change of tack hardly constitutes a bold vision for how he can save himself. Still, until now, conservative politicians and leaders have largely kept their deep concerns about the chancellor out of the public eye.
That can’t be said for some members of the youth wing of the Merz conservative bloc, who have been far more vocal in their criticism of the chancellor, but whose views are likely to reflect a much broader swath of the CDU.
“This isn’t just about Friedrich Merz, but he is part of the problem,” Clara von Nathusius, one of the leaders of the conservative bloc’s youth wing, told German public television on Sunday. “And that’s why, unfortunately, I believe we can’t win any more elections with this chancellor.”
