Friedrich Merz’s CDU has topped municipal elections in Lower Saxony, but a new poll finds 78% of Germans do not think he should remain chancellor.
The CDU finished first with 27.2%, ahead of the SPD on 24.6%.
The bigger movement came from the AfD.
It reached 15.9%, an increase of 11.3 percentage points since 2021, and forced the CDU into a mayoral runoff in the industrial city of Salzgitter.
Merz’s personal numbers are considerably worse.
An INSA poll found 78% of Germans do not believe he should remain chancellor.
That includes 58% of CDU voters.
THE FIREWALL UNDER PRESSURE
Germany’s political “firewall”, or Brandmauer, is the convention under which mainstream parties refuse to cooperate or form governing arrangements with the AfD.
Public support for that approach is weakening.
Some 46% of Germans now say the firewall no longer serves its purpose.
The AfD’s continued electoral growth makes the strategy increasingly difficult to separate from the wider democratic argument.
The party is gaining voters despite being excluded from cooperation by the established parties.
Merz now faces two more state elections next weekend.
You do not have to support the AfD to recognise the problem.
If excluding a growing party does not stop voters supporting it, at what point does the firewall start strengthening the very party it was designed to contain?
Sources
Reuters: Merz wins respite in municipal polls but faces tougher tests
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