“I am firmly convinced that Friedrich Merz will remain chancellor,” Markus Söder, the powerful state premier of Bavaria and CSU leader, said in an interview with public broadcaster ARD over the weekend.
“It would throw the conservatives into complete disarray,” Söder said of a potential swap.
“Moreover, it could even lead to new elections. And anyone who wants new elections now — in a situation like this, after such a lead-up — is only promoting one thing: bringing radicals to power. That is why my urgent advice is to focus on the work at hand and spend less time speculating behind the scenes.”
At national level, POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the AfD as the single most popular party with 28 percent support, with Merz’s conservatives on 21 percent.
At the same time, only 13 percent of Germans are satisfied with Merz’s performance, according to the latest benchmark ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll released last month. That is the lowest rating for a sitting chancellor in the survey’s nearly 30-year history.
Merz’s rock-bottom ratings reflect disappointment over his efforts to revive Germany’s ailing economy and public skepticism over far-reaching pension and health care reforms that will be difficult to implement and are expected to cost the average voter money.
For now, Merz’s most viable political strategy appears to be appealing to politicians’ risk aversion in an effort to preserve what remains of Germany’s reputation for political stability.
“I can’t imagine many people within the conservative camp saying: ‘This is the solution, and we’re willing to take any risk in the hope that we might then do better in the polls,’” said Arzheimer, the political science professor. “That would be a completely crazy idea.”