Elections for the Bundestag, the German parliament, took place on Sunday, Sept. 26. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), seem like the optimal option, at least from an outside perspective. Merkel is known to be an excellent foreign diplomat and a leader in implementing green energy who also led Germany through the 2008 and 2020 recessions. Although Merkel is not running for re-election, her successor, Armin Laschet, shares identical policy views with her. This will effectively secure the election, right? Probably not.
A lot of Germans thought Merkel’s chancellorship was extraordinary. She was able to unify the electorate through her moderate policy. In fact, the CDU shifted to become a more neoliberal and globalist party away from its Christian conservative roots. This enticed not only the mainstream CDU base but also members from across the German electorate. However, not everyone was happy with the recent shift.
Founded by former CDU members disgruntled with its changes, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) originally started out as a conservative political party in 2013. However, the succession of more moderate party members left it with a right-wing nationalist and anti-immigration agenda. This agenda resonated with some voters in 2017, making it the third most popular party in the Bundestag. Consequently, the CDU suffered historic losses in various state assemblies. Out of desperation, the CDU formed a coalition with their historic rival: the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
Party shifts and new political identification are common in Germany. For instance, with the SPD’s rightward shift, leftists left them for newer parties such as the Greens and Die Linke. However, since its inception in 1947 the CDU had always been a relatively stable party and said exodus was new.
Nevertheless, Merkel persisted and her CDU was doing well.
When Merkel announced her resignation in 2018, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was set to be her successor. In February of 2020, Kramp-Karrenbauer stepped down due to her mishandling of the Thuringia election crisis, where the Thüringen CDU and AfD attempted to form a controversial alliance in the state’s assembly. She was consequently replaced by Laschet.
Afterward, due in part to the general opinion that the CDU handled COVID-19 well in 2020, polls started to skyrocket upward of 40% among the six German parties. Then, by 2021, when the COVID-19 vaccine became available, Germany was struggling to deliver them on time, often facing delays and slowdowns, which started to tarnish the CDU’s reputation.
This tarnishing started to get worse on the campaign trail. Laschet was now an unpopular figure. On top of plagiarism charges and supposedly mocking victims of flooding, he showed himself, in the eyes of Germans, to be incompetent. A noted example of said incompetence was not being able to effectively answer a debate moderator’s question of what he had planned for Germany’s future.
With such circumstances, the CDU is polling at a historically low level as of September – around 20-23% to be exact. The SPD, headed by Olaf Scholz, is polling around 23-26% for comparison.
The consensus in Germany is that, under Merkel, the CDU was able to prove itself as being a well-functioning and competent political party. With its strength in handling issues such as climate change, various refugee crises and international diplomacy, it set the precedent of making a positive reputation for Germany by spectators.
However, in the eyes of the German electorate, Laschet won’t be able to deliver the same magic. If elected chancellor, he would have to handle issues such as worsening climate change, diplomacy with Russia and China and the recent influx of refugees from Afghanistan. Unless Laschet is scrapped, the CDU will probably go downhill.
