German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is remarkably unpopular. Recent polling showed that less than a quarter of Germans have a positive opinion of him, and those numbers are dwindling fast. That should not surprise anyone, least of all Merz. He came to power less than a year ago on a manifesto promising “political change for Germany.” Since then, he has avoided tackling crucial reforms. If he thinks that is playing it safe, he is mistaken. Germans voted for change and expect him to deliver.
Voters have known Merz a long time. He had never held a cabinet position before becoming chancellor, but he was a vocal conservative politician with a reputation for hotheadedness. He represented a counteroffer to a cautious center-left political mainstream. His public role was that of former chancellor Angela Merkel’s archrival within the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), criticizing her on issues such as asylum and energy policy. When people wanted change after 16 years of Merkel and three years of her “continuity” successor, Olaf Scholz, Merz seemed the man of the hour.
Immediately after becoming chancellor last year, he looked set fair. Surveys in June last year indicated that most Germans were satisfied with his work, and he was the fourth most popular politician in the rankings, outdone only by three members of his own cabinet. Since then, Merz’s fall in the electorate’s estimation has been steep and fast. In one recent poll, he was as unpopular as Scholz, who had held the negative record since such polling began in the 1990s. The far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), which was 8 percentage points behind Merz’s conservatives in last year’s election, is now neck-and-neck.
What has he done to deplete voters’ goodwill? Nothing — that is the problem. Instead of a dynamic agenda, Merz and his team have enforced a “Ming vase” strategy of maximum political caution — to avoid breaking anything — and non-committal rhetoric. This was deliberate because this year is a bumper year for elections, with five of Germany’s 16 states going to the polls. For fear of upsetting voters with bold debates and proposals, Merz’s CDU has decided to say and do nothing, hoping to carry narrow victories over the line. It is a tactic that is backfiring spectacularly.
Take this month’s regional elections in the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg. It has always been in CDU hands, apart from a recent 15-year spell under Germany’s first and thus-far only Green state leader, Winfried Kretschmann, himself unusually conservative for a member of his party.
As an industrial hub and heartland of the German car industry, Baden-Wurttemberg is terrified of deindustrialization. Surveys showed that the economy was the biggest concern for voters. It is also an issue that voters trust the CDU to tackle more than any other party. That is why it had an 8 percent lead in the polls over the incumbent Greens in January and every chance to take the state back. Yet, in the elections on March 8, they came second to the Greens. The AfD doubled its vote share to 19 percent, the best it has achieved so far in any of the former West German states. Merz called it a “bitter result.”
What happened in Baden-Wurttemberg is a case study of the whole country. People are troubled by major and contentious issues such as economic reform, immigration, pensions, welfare spending and security. The Greens fielded a charismatic candidate, Cem Ozdemir, who spoke candidly about all of them, even if this brought him into conflict with his own left-leaning party.
Ozdemir, himself a son of Turkish immigrants, said that “immigration must be much more tightly controlled.” Despite being a prominent Green, he indicated support for a more car-friendly economic policy. These are topics the CDU could and should have owned, but they sent the relatively unknown Manuel Hagel into the race and seemed to try to avoid running a campaign altogether.
Despite such painful setbacks and plummeting popularity, Merz appears to believe that voters fear change and would punish those who advocate it. Initially promising an “autumn of reforms” last year to shake the German economy out of its malaise, his party let that fizzle out. When a group of young conservatives in his own party pushed for a substantial revamp of the hugely expensive and increasingly outdated pension system, he attacked them sharply.
“You can’t be serious,” he said, adding that “such things don’t win elections.” As with most Western countries, Germany’s establishment politicians are running scared of the ever-expanding bloc of older voters.
However, it turns out timid and non-committal politics do not win elections either. Recent surveys all point the same way: Voters want change. According to various polls, two-thirds of Germans think the welfare system is not sustainable. More than 80 percent say the pension system is dysfunctional and that politicians are not doing enough to fix it. Nearly 80 percent say Germany’s economic situation is dire, and more than six in 10 think the state does not exercise enough control over people entering the country.
These are all classic conservative topics the party could run with if it found the backbone.
Merz’s fear of backlash and controversy leaves the field of conservative politics wide open for others. In Baden-Wurttemberg, both the Greens on the left and the AfD on the right took advantage. Ozdemir went out of his way to claim center-right ground, even hiding the Green Party logo on his campaign posters.
The AfD did not have to try hard to double its result. Its candidate, Markus Frohnmeier, made it clear he has no interest in regional politics. He was not in Germany for the election, instead networking with Republicans in the US for the AfD at the national level, where his real ambitions lie. That does not matter to its growing number of voters, many of whom are former CDU supporters, now desperate for something different and no longer trusting Merz to deliver it.
German conservatives talk about Merz’s rule as the “last shot for democracy,” but they lack the courage of their conviction. It is unclear what Merz is waiting for. Political risk comes with the job. The nature and scale of the required task demands urgency, and voters could not have made it clearer that that is what they want, too. They look around them and sense that the time to turn things around is now. If Merz cannot find the impetus to make that happen, they would look elsewhere for alternatives.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and journalist. Her latest book, Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, is out in May. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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