If all goes to plan, Friedrich Merz will turn out to be the Federal Republic‘s tenth chancellor on Could 6. The 2 remaining hurdles seem like formalities: On Monday, his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) will convene for a particular social gathering convention to approve the coalition contract with the center-left Social Democratic Get together (SPD). Then, just a few days later, the SPD’s members — some grumbling however — are anticipated to approve the alliance in a vote, with the outcomes introduced on April 30.
However Merz will not have lengthy to benefit from the congratulations. Although he gained the nationwide election in late February, the 69-year-old’s private reputation appears to be on a everlasting slide: Based on an April ballot by analysis institute Forsa for Stern journal, simply 21% of respondents think about Merz reliable — 9 share factors decrease than in August, and down three factors from January.
The identical ballot discovered that solely 40% of respondents think about the incoming chancellor a powerful chief, and 27% assume Merz “is aware of what strikes folks,” each of which characterize nine-point falls since January. On the plus aspect — certainly, the one management standards during which Merz scored a majority within the survey — about 60% of respondents imagine that Merz “speaks understandably.”
A not-so-grand coalition
It is no shock that Merz is not precisely the preferred chancellor-in-waiting Germany has ever seen. However Ursula Münch, the director of the Tutzing Academy for Political Training in Bavaria, advised DW that it isn’t all his fault. “The circumstances are very totally different than they was once,” Münch mentioned. “We’ve got a authorities that has a comparatively small proportion of help amongst voters.”
Merz has not picked probably the most lucky second in historical past: In conventional political parlance, a coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD is known as a “grand coalition,” as a result of for a lot of many years these two events represented an awesome majority of Germany’s voters (generally nicely over 80%). Within the fragmented panorama of 2025, during which events have splintered and splintered once more over the previous 20 years, the 2 massive centrist events can solely declare to characterize 45% of voters, going by the February election outcomes.
Merz’s belief points
There are two apparent the reason why the notion of Merz’s trustworthiness might need fallen up to now few months. In January, Merz broke his personal phrase when he turned the primary CDU chief to cross a movement via the Bundestag with the help of the far-right Various for Germany (AfD), complete factions of that are deemed by intelligence businesses to be a menace to Germany’s democratic order.
For CDU supporters, nonetheless, that appeared like a less-egregious U-turn than the one Merz carried out just a few weeks later: In March, the social gathering chief agreed a debt brake reform with the SPD and the Greens that paved the way in which for €1 trillion ($1.14 trillion) in new loans, one thing he had expressly dominated out all through the election marketing campaign.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of his voters felt betrayed. In a “Politbarometer” ballot carried out by public broadcaster ZDF on the time, some 73% of Germans agreed that he had deceived voters — together with some 44% of CDU/CSU supporters.
Merz’s head-through-the-wall perspective
Merz has issues that go a lot additional again than hisrecent U-turns. Surveys have proven that he’s significantly unpopular amongst ladies. A Forsa survey from March 2024 discovered that solely 9% of girls aged 18 to 29 noticed Merz as their most well-liked chancellor candidate.
The incoming chancellor has been dogged with accusations of misogyny. In 1997, as is commonly introduced up, he was one of many Bundestag members who voted towards recognizing rape inside marriage as a criminal offense. In October final yr, he was criticized for rejecting the thought of gender-balanced Cupboards, and this repute was not helped by a photograph launched in February exhibiting that the primary negotiators of the CDU/CSU bloc have been all middle-aged males.
Merz can be unpopular in japanese Germany, the place he usually polled behind each the AfD’s Alice Weidel and the SPD’s Olaf Scholz within the run-up to the election — partly, it appears, due to his belligerent perspective towards Russia.
Merz’s AfD drawback
Merz’s calculation seems to be that, with right-wing populism apparently on rise around the globe, what folks need is straight-talking management. However populism doesn’t seem like making him extra widespread. In November 2018, when he first introduced his candidacy to re-take the management of the CDU, Merz posted a tweet that appears to age worse with each month: “We are able to as soon as once more attain as much as 40% and halve the AfD. That’s doable!” he wrote. “However we should create the preconditions for it. That’s our activity.”
Virtually the other has occurred. Since Merz ultimately re-took the CDU management in January 2022 (on his third try), the social gathering’s ballot scores have stayed at 24%, whereas the AfD’s haven’t halved however doubled: From 11% to 24%. Germany’s far-right and center-right events at the moment are neck and neck.
However, after all, Merz has not had an opportunity to be chancellor but, and Münch mentioned he may but be capable of make good on his AfD prediction — if his authorities runs with out the inner strife that dogged Scholz’s coalition, and if it isn’t hit by an exterior disaster such because the COVID-19 pandemic or escalating battle in Ukraine that will requires the chancellor to take extra U-turns and lose much more belief. These are massive ifs.
“The easiest way to maintain the AfD small is not making some random announcement about massive modifications in refugee coverage that you would be able to’t implement,” Münch mentioned. “It is concrete measures that individuals additionally discover. However that is not one thing {that a} new authorities can simply flip round in a single day. Individuals must be given confidence once more, and that can solely be doable when the financial forecast turns extra optimistic and the refugee numbers fall.”
Merz was initially thought-about a powerful candidate exactly due to his enterprise background (he was on the board on the funding firm BlackRock for a number of years), which was alleged to sign his financial acumen. Previously few years, nonetheless, his populist statements have more and more been about immigration, and that hasn’t helped him shake off the AfD.
German business below strain
