Despite the fact that Friedrich Merz managed to stabilize the centre-right CDU, which after 16 years was forced to join the opposition benches again after the 2021 elections, in the post-Merkel period the main fault line within the party remains as He: To follow those who withdrew before the last election, also called Angela Merkel’s centrist-center-right Bundesmutti politics, or to go back to the pre-Merkel era, push the party completely to the right.
Because of this, Merz balances two factions within the party, while previously clearly rejecting Merkel’s policies – he was forced out of the CDU when Merkel became party chair and then chancellor in 2006, and for this he has been one of the biggest critics. of Merkel’s policies prior to the presidential election of his third party, and was finally able to return to politics after more than a decade.
At the same time, despite the results achieved in the provincial council elections, the leadership in public opinion polls and the continuing weakness of the ruling parties, it seems that it has not been decided at all who will lead the party alliance between the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Union, which are taking place together in the elections, and therefore also called Union Parties, in 2025 Federal Election. Because a radical regional prime minister recently announced: Merz’s candidacy for the post of chancellor is not at all clear, and the party coalition delegates must also take it into account when deciding on the election leader of the union parties.
The trade union parties would again be controlled by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia
At the end of June, in an opinion article and then in an interview, the CDU Prime Minister of the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Fust, who held this post for only a year and a half, stated that He will measure it Same for the most important nomination.
Woest, who has been serving as a representative at provincial level since 2005, became provincial premier after Armin Laschet, who failed in the 2021 elections as CDU president and chancellor candidate, chose to serve in the Bundestag instead of leading the province, so in provincial elections For 2022 the CDU won under his leadership.
Wüst served as the minister responsible for transport in the province between 2017 and 2021, before becoming the party’s candidate for premier. In the provincial elections in June 2022, the local CDU won 35.7 percent of the vote—that’s 2.7 percentage points and 4 more states than was taken. achieved with Laschet in 2017.
At the same time, Lust’s current registration is not only about his strong position within the party – despite being a popular politician – but rather, it is shocking how unstable Frederik Merz’s presidency of the party was.
In addition to Wüst, Daniel Gunther, Premier of Schleswig-Holstein, who has also already been mentioned as a possible candidate for chancellor in the German press, is one of the party’s hopes. Criticize him The leader of the party, saying: Criticizing the ruling parties is not enough in itself, and the party leadership – although he does not say that, but clearly refers to Merz – should better explain to the voters the political plans of the party and its type. The alternative would be if the trade union parties returned to the government. In this way, he also strengthens the group, which is not large in number, but clearly supports Wüst.
The eternal question
Merz’s position is not secure within the party only because many people dislike his often confrontational political contacts, and Merz is also a divisive figure. The latter is no better evidence than the fact that he managed to secure the position of party leader only on the third attempt, after Angela Merkel announced in 2018 that she would not run for the party’s upcoming presidential elections.
In 2018, he lost to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was backed by Merkel and aimed for his successor, nicknamed just AKK because of his name, and in January 2021, he lost to Armin Laschet, also classified as a centrist. In both cases, Merz unsuccessfully reached the second round of elections for the post of party chairman, because of his divisive personality, the delegates were always united against him.
However, in the last elections, not delegates, but all members of the party could vote in the person of the party president, and because of his weak rivals, he was given the imaginary steering wheel of the CDU.
Although it may seem overwhelming that he has already secured a majority of votes in the first round, a total of 62.1 percent, nearly 38 percent of party members still consider Norbert Röttgen, the former environmental protection minister who failed under Merkel, is. The best candidate – although he later became chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee in the Bundestag. He rebuilt himself – or Helge Braun, who started out quietly as an underdog and lost to the young Social Democrats in his district in the federal elections in 2021, who performed as chief of staff for the Bundesmut during Merkel’s last term.
During his leadership of his party so far, Merz has managed to stop the decline in support for trade union parties, and even to rise from the result of 23 percentage points achieved in the 2022 elections,
But despite a sharp drop in support for the ruling parties, the CDU/CSU voter turnout has also begun to decline since May, while the far-right AfD has doubled its number of followers.
This is not helped by the fact that the party chief has to handle internal affairs, though Build According to his information, to a storm of applause at the factional meeting of the union parties, he announced that he was still the only person capable of uniting the party, and besides him, Markus Soder, the head of the CSU. , which has always acted in alliance with the CDU and operates only in Bavaria, could feel the weight of the Chancellor’s candidacy and therefore, according to the newspaper, essentially declared: they would certainly be kingmakers.
And what about Markus Soder?
At the same time, it wasn’t certain that that would be the case, no matter how hard the Party Chief tried to show it. Among Germans, Wüst is a much more popular politician than Merz, moreover, while Merz was already 69 at the time of the election, his rival would be only 49, so time is definitely in favor of the latter, while the next elections held in 2025 may be Merz’s last chance to become chancellor Not at all – even if he becomes a candidate for chancellor.
Because while CDU members in the federal legislature applauded Merz, party voters no longer had such a good opinion of him.
the ZDF According to the latest poll by the majority of Germans, and even among voters of union parties, the ex-Merkel party is only the third best candidate: according to party supporters, the best chance of electoral success for the CDU is a young prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia (28% of those surveyed thought so ), followed by CSU leader and Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder with 25%, and Merz taking only third place with his support of 22%. The same question is already 22-22-16 for all German residents, with no change in the order.
And then we didn’t even talk about the dreams of Chancellor Marcus Söder, who in 2021 allowed Armin Laschet to fall,
While, in addition to the majority of party members, even Merkel herself favored him as a candidate for chancellor. At the time, the German press had been preoccupied for months with the duel between the chiefs of the CDU and CSU, at the end of which Laschet won the chancellorship, but was so exhausted in this duel that his performance was only good enough for the Christian Democratic Party to achieve one of the weakest results in its history. .
However, if the union parties want to return to power, they cannot deal with internal squabbles that last for months again.
In addition, the delegates, themselves fearing their mandate in the Bundestag, would prefer a strong candidate who would drag the party’s performance up rather than down.
And Merz is not only able to unite the party behind him – A.S to FAZ Anonymous CDU politicians also criticize him because Merz does not communicate much with his party and speaks mostly only to the public – but the majority of Germans do not believe him that the former harsher and more conservative critic of Merkel has meanwhile become a more moderate candidate.
Despite this, the party communicates to the outside that all is well and the Merz’s power is well established. At the same time, it is already certain that the chancellor’s candidacy is not automatic for him, moreover, if Söder confidently wins the Bavarian provincial elections held in October 2023 – which he currently has every chance in the polls. because With an advantage of 24.5 percentage points – then he can officially apply for the title of candidate for the post of chancellor. Because unlike Meretz, it has already proven several times that it can win elections.
(Cover photo: Fredrik Merz, Hendrik Woust, and Markus Söder. Photo: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
