parties
AfD high flight and CDU standstill
Against the background of relatively high poll numbers for the AfD, CDU leader Merz has once again clearly spoken out against working with the party. photo
© Sebastian Christoph Gollnow/dpa
The traffic light suffering is currently only the AfD Freud’. The Union, on the other hand, does not benefit from the displeasure of its citizens. CDU boss Merz has his explanations for this – but may fall short.
Persistently ahead in the polls nationwide, already won a state election this year and the best prospects in the two upcoming ones, your own ranks closed like you haven’t in a long time – so it’s going well with the CDU and CSU? No not true.
Because there is another development that is less pleasant for the Union: At the moment, only one party is benefiting from the growing dissatisfaction of citizens with the policies of the traffic light coalition: the AfD. While it is constantly rising in the polls, the Union is literally stuck at the 30 percent mark.
In the most recent ARD “Germany trend” the AfD climbed by two points to 18 percent and was thus level with the SPD for the first time. The CDU/CSU slipped down one point to 29 percent. The development in the latest Insa survey for “Bild am Sonntag” was similar: Here, too, the AfD gained one point and ended up tied with the SPD at 19 percent. The Union also lost a point here and still came to 27 percent.
Those in charge of the CDU and CSU see the reasons for the success of the right-wing party in the traffic light coalition: “A weak and constantly quarreling government triggers counter-reactions. With the AfD, the citizens can miss out on heavy lessons,” wrote CDU chairman Friedrich Merz last weekend in its “MerzMail” newsletter.
Merz: Union is held responsible for the state of the country
But why don’t the disaffected turn to the Union? “We are also held jointly responsible for the state of the country – and the mantra of the traffic lights, that they finally have to clean up what has been left there for 16 years, catches on with many voters,” was Merz’s answer. And: If the Union then takes counter-positions to the traffic light, they are quickly confronted with the racism club and the accusation of a shift to the right. “Such a narrowing of the climate of opinion only pays off for the AfD, and so the traffic light nourishes this party twice over.”
As far as the state of the coalition is concerned, the polls seem to agree with Merz. While 79 percent of those surveyed in the ARD “Deutschlandtrend” were less or not at all satisfied with the work of the federal government, the same was true for 98 percent of AfD supporters. At the top of the list of reasons for them were immigration and migration (65 percent) as well as energy, environmental and climate policy (47 percent).
Findings on the ZDF “political barometer”
What the CDU must give to think about: the citizens do not trust it to have any greater problem-solving skills than the traffic light. This was shown in the latest ZDF “Politbarometer”, in which only 22 percent assumed that a government led by the Union would do things better. 25 percent even expected it to get worse, for 48 percent there would be no difference. And another question arises: Is Merz the right man? In the ARD and ZDF surveys, the 67-year-old only ranked sixth in the popularity and satisfaction rankings.
The CDU and its chairman have to get dizzy when looking into the coming year. In autumn 2024, new state parliaments will be elected in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia. The AfD could become the strongest force in all three countries, as the polls show. The CDU and AfD are on par in Brandenburg with 23 percent. In Saxony, the AfD is three points ahead of the CDU with 28 percent. And in Thuringia, the AfD’s lead over the CDU is even clearer at 28 to 21 percent.
It’s been a long time since Merz boldly declared war on the AfD: “I dare to halve the AfD – that works.” That was in November 2018 when Merz applied – unsuccessfully – to succeed Angela Merkel for the CDU presidency. Today the sentence from him can no longer be heard, all the louder for a strict demarcation, as just in the “Heute Journal” on ZDF: “We have nothing to do with these people, and there will be no cooperation here – underhand, over the hand, on the table, under the table with me and not us.”
The CDU, like the other parties, can give hope that only 32 percent of those surveyed in the “Deutschlandtrend” said that the AfD would be an option for them in elections because they were convinced of it. 67 percent justified this with disappointment with the policies of the other parties. This group could possibly be won back through a different policy, says political scientist Jürgen Falter. Brandenburg’s CDU state chairman Jan Redmann appealed to his party on Monday: “The CDU is called upon at all levels to fight more passionately for their ideas.”
MerzMail ARD Germany trend ZDF political barometer Insa survey