More than half of Germans do not believe that Friedrich Merz will be a good chancellor, a new survey has said. According to the poll conducted by the Forsa polling institute for the RTL/n-tv Trendbarometer, 52% of respondents are sceptical of the CDU leader, compared to only 38% who think he will do a good job.
Support for Merz is also dwindling among his own voters: 74% of CDU sympathisers believe that Merz will be a good chancellor, which is a lot lower than the 83% from last week’s similar survey.
The centre-right CDU leader’s image has been tarnished by his proposal to force the state to take on a massive €1 trillion debt to boost defence and infrastructure. He did this by giving in to the demands of his likely future coalition partner, the Social Democrats—and he may also adhere to the wishes of the left-wing Greens for their support.
The CDU won the national elections on February 23rd despite receiving 28.5% of the vote, one of the worst results in the party’s history. Voters who did give their support to the centre-right party did so thinking that Merz would deliver on his promises to take a tough course on migration and revive Germany’s faltering industrial base while getting rid of radical climate policies.
So far, however, he has made a U-turn on his policies—even before becoming chancellor—in order to accommodate the Social Democrats. On migration, for example, he has backtracked on his vow to close Germany’s borders to illegal and undocumented migrants, and on the budget, he is willing to indebt the country instead of pursuing fiscally conservative politics.
Also, if he is intent on securing the support of the Greens for his debt plan, he will naturally be forced to accept their demands on climate funding.
Two-and-a-half weeks after the elections, the CDU’s support has mildly dipped, signalling that there is not huge enthusiasm for Merz’s programme. According to the latest opinion polls, the CDU, together with its Bavarian sister party CSU, is on 28%, a drop of 0.5 percentage points compared to their election result.
The Social Democrats are also on a downward spiral: they currently have the support of 15% of the electorate, a 1.4-point drop compared to their election result.
Meanwhile, the right-wing AfD party, which finished second on 20.8%, now has 22% support.
