The new year will be the most important of his career for CDU leader Merz. The question of the candidate for chancellor will be decided by autumn at the latest. Söder continues to lurk in the background. But it’s actually about much more.
If there is something that people in Berlin are whistling from the rooftops, it is that Friedrich Merz wants to become Chancellor. He doesn’t say that publicly and he avoids the constant questions about it. In principle, however, every CDU chairman is a candidate for the candidacy for chancellor. He himself even wrote in his most recent “Merz email”: “Anyone who goes into politics in Germany and is reasonably talented must want to become Chancellor.” Wolfgang Schäuble once told him that, whose life he honored in his weekly newsletter. One can assume that Merz considers himself “somewhat talented”.
2024 will be the year of truth for Merz. He can tick off his first two years at the helm of the CDU as “so far, so good”. But now it’s all about his decades-old ambition to reach the top. The question of the candidacy for chancellor will be decided in late summer. Actually, it all boils down to Merz: He is the CDU boss and therefore set. In the trend barometer from RTL and ntv, the Union has roughly as many votes as the SPD, Greens and FDP combined. The Union also celebrated successes in state elections, most recently in Hesse, for example. Merz’s popularity ratings are bad, but so are incumbent Olaf Scholz’s. However, the Chancellery project will not be a sure-fire success.
First of all, there are the elections this year, which will have a say in Merz’s momentum. The by-election will begin in February in Berlin, where the 2021 federal election will have to be partially repeated. It will not change the situation in the Bundestag, but it is an initial test of mood. Can the Union convert its good poll numbers into election results? The prospects are good – after all, the CDU was already the strongest force in the repeat election to the House of Representatives a year ago.
European election test case
The European elections in June are more important. It is the only nationwide ballot this year. This means that the meaningfulness is great. The elephant in the room is the AfD. How strong will the right-wing populists become? After all, they are the most Eurocritical party. Officially, the candidates have eaten chalk and are no longer calling for the EU to be dissolved. But beneath the surface there are still many who can’t do anything with it, as was seen at the European Party conference last summer. How successfully does the CDU, in its own opinion the European party par excellence, counteract this? Merz himself said that the refugee issue would be crucial. His analysis in short: The more the number of asylum seekers falls by then, the better. One might add: the better for him too.
The state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg will follow in September. The AfD is playing for victory there and, according to surveys, could become the strongest force. In Thuringia it would trump the Left, in Brandenburg the SPD and in Saxony the CDU. There, Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer’s fight is like walking a tightrope. His statements are sometimes indistinguishable from AfD speech. Is he talking to the competition from the right? Or does he pick up their sympathizers? Does it even broaden the spectrum of voters for the democratic parties? The discussion about this is ongoing.
The elections in East Germany are particularly important for Merz because he once set out to win back voters from the AfD. His old statement that he wanted to halve the AfD constantly catches up with him. Today he says that given what he sees as the poor traffic light performance, that wouldn’t work at all. He could be right in that it does not solely depend on the CDU how strong or weak the support for the AfD is. It’s not just CDU voters who are switching to this. The SPD and the Left Party are also losing voters to them. Nevertheless, Merz’s attractiveness was to strengthen the CDU’s conservative profile and that was actually supposed to make the party more successful again in the East after the Merkel years.
Risk factor: Merz
For Merz, these three state elections are fateful – if he performs successfully, he will have the decisive tailwind for the K question. On the other hand, poor election results in the states always reflect on the federal party. Markus Söder should see this as his chance. That’s why he demanded that a decision on the candidacy be made after these elections. Merz, on the other hand, would prefer if the matter were clarified beforehand. The two had a long-distance skirmish about this last summer. But the Union is saying that no one wants to have a big argument like the one between Söder and Armin Laschet anymore.
NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst also has an iron in the fire. He is trying to present himself as a man of the middle, ruling in Düsseldorf with the Greens – who are the “main opponent in the government” for Merz. Wüst repeatedly takes more or less clear swipes at Merz. In a highly publicized interview with the “Frankfurter Allgemeine” he said that his place was “currently” in Düsseldorf. At the end of December he called for a say in the candidacy for chancellor in “Spiegel”. Merz-Adlatus and CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann had previously spoken out in the “Welt” as candidates for federal chairman. However, it doesn’t look like Wüst will be able to run for office at the moment. To do this he would first have to explain himself.
Actually, all signs point to Merz. That still leaves the risk factor called Friedrich Merz. The Sauerlander makes it a point not to speak in such a controlled manner as, for example, Chancellor Scholz. He wants to be understood. However, sometimes he doesn’t do that well. Keyword “Little Pashas”, his strange formulation that the CDU is the real “alternative for Germany” or the unnecessary beer tent slogan in the Bavarian election campaign that Kreuzberg is not Germany. So far, such sayings haven’t done him any harm. However, the excitement after the summer interview on ZDF was a bit tougher. You have to “shape things together with the AfD,” he said about possible collaboration with the AfD. His followers then had to laboriously explain what he meant. And that the “firewall” is still standing. This remains a risk for the actual election campaign. And Laschet’s laughter in the flood area showed that supposed little things can destroy entire election campaigns. In any case, the road to the Chancellery is still long.