Will Germany’s Chancellor Go Down?

Recent state elections have been disastrous for Friedrich Merz, who now holds the title of least popular federal chancellor in German history. His Christian Democrat Union (CDU) has suffered catastrophic defeats, while the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) continues to gain strength. Merz and the political establishment he leads have been left struggling to adapt to a seismic shift in the country’s political landscape.

Two weeks ago, in an election in Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU’s vote share more than halved, falling to just 17 percent, while AfD, under the charismatic Ulrich Siegmund, won a stunning 44 percent of the vote. Saxony-Anhalt may thus become the first state with an AfD government, a prospect that has sent shockwaves through Germany’s “legacy” political parties—the center-right CDU as well as the center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP)—and prompted hysteria among the liberal media.

This past Sunday, elections in two more German states dealt further blows to the CDU. 

In the north-east state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Merz’s party suffered near-total humiliation: With slightly less than 5 percent—a result that even the chancellor described as “disastrous”—the Christian Democrats failed to clear the threshold necessary to enter parliament. For the first time since 1949, there will be a German state legislature without a  single CDU member. Meanwhile, the AfD won 38 percent of the vote, more than doubling its last result and running slightly ahead of the ruling Social Democrats.

And in Berlin, the post-communist Die Linke (“The Left”), led by its top candidate, Elif Eralp, came in first with 26 percent of the vote. Die Linke campaigned on a stridently left-wing agenda, pledging to nationalize large housing companies and offering vociferous criticism of Israel. (At one party event, a rapper performed a song that included the lyrics “death to the IDF,” sparking another debate about antisemitism within the left.) Berlin, with its large and growing Arab population and traditions of political radicalism, has proven fertile ground for this kind of approach. One head of a notorious Arab clan, who has multiple convicted criminal offenders in his extended family, paid a visit to the party’s victory celebration. The CDU fell to a distant second place with less than 19 percent of the votes, and AfD came in third with 16 percent.