Tuesday, November 02, 2021
Who should be the new CDU boss?
Just under one in five for Friedrich Merz
Even among CDU supporters, almost a quarter of Germans do not consider any of the candidates currently being discussed to be a suitable party leader. Only the plan of a membership decision meets with broad approval.
In the race for the office of CDU chairman, two candidates who have already applied for the post are ahead in the assessment of the Germans: Friedrich Merz and Norbert Röttgen. When asked who is best suited for the CDU chairmanship, 19 percent named Merz and 17 percent Röttgen in a survey by the opinion research institute Forsa for the RTL / ntv trend barometer.
10 percent were in favor of Jens Spahn, 9 percent for Union parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus and 6 percent for the CDU economic politician Carsten Linnemann. However, 39 percent of those questioned chose the sixth answer option: “none of them, don’t know”.
At 43 percent, support for Merz came from people who, in their political self-assessment, tend to belong to the “right-wing” spectrum. Among the AfD voters, Merz comes to 41 percent on this question. In both groups, all other potential applicants are single-digit. Among the over 60-year-olds, approval for Merz is twice as high at 24 percent as among the under 30-year-olds, of whom only 12 percent consider it suitable.
Majority for member decision
For half of the young voters under 30 (51 percent) none of the named candidates is generally suitable for the CDU chairmanship. Only 25 percent of the over-60s give this answer.
Among the voters of the CDU, Merz is with 29 percent just ahead of Röttgen with 24 percent. In this group, Spahn made up 7 percent, Brinkhaus 8 and Linnemann 9. Almost a quarter of the CDU voters (23 percent) did not consider any of the named candidates to be a suitable party chairman.
The vast majority of respondents (59 percent) think that the CDU should elect the new party leader through a membership decision. 25 percent believe that the new CDU chairman should be elected at a party congress, as before. Of the CDU voters, 58 percent are in favor of electing the new party chairman by membership vote and 33 percent in favor of an election by a party congress.
The data was collected by the market and opinion research institute Forsa on behalf of RTL Germany from October 28th to 29th, 2021. Database: 1000 respondents. Statistical error tolerance: +/- 3 percentage points.