The traffic light coalition has massively lost trust and is now stable below 40 percent. But it is not the largest opposition party that benefits from this, but the AfD. How can that be? Forsa managing director Peter Matuschek says that Friedrich Merz gives the impression “that the CDU is aligning its own discourse with how strong the AfD is at the moment”. That helps the AfD. Matuschek is certain: With Merz as the candidate for chancellor, it would be “very difficult for the Union to achieve a significantly better result than in 2021”.
ntv.de: In the current trend barometer, the Union only comes to 25 percent, the AfD to 21 percent. Is the result of the Union poll a consequence of Friedrich Merz questioning the “fire wall” between the CDU and AfD, at least for the municipal level?
Peter Matuschek is Managing Director of Forsa.
(Photo: picture alliance / Britta Pedersen/dpa)
Peter Matuschek: The discussion initiated by Friedrich Merz has at least led to the position of the CDU on this issue being perceived as unclear. We know from many previous elections that right-wing parties are strengthened when the other parties adopt an ambivalent attitude towards them or when they try to get closer to them in terms of language or content. But that is what is happening at the moment when, as a reaction to the good values of the AfD in the polls, demands are made from the ranks of the CDU, such as the abolition of the right to asylum or rapid proceedings against violent offenders in swimming pools. There are voices from the eastern state associations saying that the CDU must make it clear “that we want a different country”.
The Thuringian CDU boss Mario Voigt has this in the “mirror” said.
Regardless of how such statements are motivated – in the end the impression is created that the firewall to the AfD is no longer really standing.
Why is the AfD strengthened when Merz describes the CDU as an “alternative for Germany with substance”?
The AfD has always benefited when it got attention, when the other parties and the media dealt with it. As a CDU chairman, you have to come up with a phrase like “we are an alternative for Germany with substance”, especially in a situation in which the AfD has been around 20 percent for weeks. Regardless of whether it was intended as a linguistic gimmick or as an ironic formulation: With such a formulation, Merz gives the impression that the CDU is aligning its own discourse with how strong the AfD is at the moment. That weakens the CDU and helps the AfD because it gets even more attention.
In the past week, a Forsa survey showed that central positions of the AfD among Germans are not even remotely capable of winning a majority. How can it be that a party is so successful in the polls whose core concerns are not shared by the population?
You have to take a closer look. The 21 percent that the AfD currently achieves in the trend barometer refers to those who are willing to vote: i.e. to those eligible to vote who would currently take part in the election. But we also have an increasing proportion of eligible voters who do not want to take part in the election. Among all eligible voters, the AfD share is currently 14 to 15 percent. The other 85 percent would vote for a different party or not at all. And it shows very clearly that the AfD is not elected because of individual political demands, but because its supporters reject and condemn the entire current political system.
In the shadow of the survey results from the Union and AfD, the figures for the traffic light parties are hardly ever talked about. At the halfway point in a legislative period, is it normal for the coalition to only get 38 percent?
Of course, there were also certain weak phases in previous governments in the middle of the legislative period. However, the fact that the three governing parties together are now stable under 40 percent and are currently only elected by 27 percent of all eligible voters is a dramatic development. The erosion of the three traffic light parties for a government also started very early – in the summer of 2022 – and has continued since then. What is also new is that the party that provides the chancellor has as little popular support as the SPD currently has.
When it comes to the chancellor question, it is noticeable that Merz is the only possible candidate who performs worse than his party. Can one say that he is responsible for the poll numbers of the Union?
You have to realize that the government is rated extremely poorly, and less than a third still trust the chancellor. And it is not the largest opposition party that benefits from this, but the AfD, and the proportion of splinter parties and the number of non-voters is increasing. Merz has played a decisive part in this situation, because they are even less satisfied with his work as leader of the opposition than with the work of the Chancellor. Even among the supporters of the Union parties, not even half are satisfied with his work.
Then a more central course would be more promising than trying to become more conservative?
Without any doubt. The elections in which the CDU was successful in recent years – whether at federal or state level – prove this in an impressive way. And whenever the CDU has not clearly differentiated itself from the AfD in its profile, it is not the CDU that benefits in the end, but the AfD, most of whose voters have incidentally never voted for the CDU. The more the CDU tries to sharpen its conservative profile, the more it scares voters in the political center – including many women and younger people – whom Merkel had trouble keeping for the CDU.
Incidentally, the CDU does not help if people – despite all the frustration about the traffic light coalition – get the impression that the Union is at least partially slipping in the direction of fundamental opposition. People want a constructive opposition party that they trust to take over government tomorrow. The Union’s problem is that at the moment only 12 percent of Germans trust it to solve the problems in Germany. In the SPD it’s only 10 percent, but that doesn’t help the Union. Under Merz, the Union is far from the competence values it had under Merkel.
Not only Friedrich Merz, but also all other potential chancellor candidates – Olaf Scholz, Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock – only get comparatively bad values. In your opinion, is it still possible for parties in a society that is becoming increasingly fragmented politically to offer a candidate for chancellor that a majority of Germans approve of?
The fact that there are still such politicians is shown by the case of the new Federal Defense Minister, who rose to become the most popular politician in our ranking of politicians shortly after his appointment. The fact that 63 percent are now satisfied with his work, and that in a position that is by no means easy like that of defense minister, shows that his great popularity was not only due to the relief at the replacement of his extremely unpopular predecessor. So it is possible, even or especially in times of crisis, to earn a high level of trust as a politician – as with Pistorius – in almost all sections of the population and voters.
From the point of view of the pollster, would it be a good idea if the Union went into the 2025 election campaign with Söder as its candidate for chancellor?
It is too early to say who will be the Union’s most promising chancellor candidate in the next federal election in two years’ time. Markus Söder first has to contest the state elections in Bavaria in autumn. Other possible candidates from the federal states are not yet sufficiently profiled nationwide. In view of the solidified negative opinion of German citizens about Friedrich Merz, it would be very difficult for the Union with him as Chancellor candidate to achieve a significantly better result than in 2021.
Hubertus Volmer spoke to Peter Matuschek