Munich, September 25, 2025. Union Chancellor candidate Markus Söder has sworn the CDU and CSU to a victory in the federal election despite miserable surveys. “Survey results are not election results and 17 percent behind the SPD are just a snapshot,” said Söder at his final rally in the Olching bird park. “This country cannot stand a Federal Chancellor Kevin Kühnert for another four years.” CSU General Secretary Katrin Albsteiger criticized the lack of support from the CDU at Tiktok: “It is also your candidate for Chancellor, you Honks.” In April, Söder prevailed in a bitter internal dispute against the CDU applicant Wolfgang Schäuble.
The CDU pointed out that the head of the Aachen office of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Armin Laschet, had just published a call for elections. “I don’t think long about whether I can vote for the Union with this candidate for chancellor,” Laschet wrote in it. “I know what I have to do and you, dear fellow citizens, know it too.” Former Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who “paved the way for a new generation of social democracy” after a three-month term in office in the summer of 2022, urged the Union to be more civic: “I urge everyone to speak more slowly and more quietly.”
Meanwhile, numerous CSU representatives reaffirmed their backing for Söder. “We fully support our chancellor candidate Markus Söder and congratulate him on his clear announcement that there is no return ticket to Munich in the event of a defeat,” said Ilse Aigner and Michaela Kaniber in a joint statement, who surprisingly also joined Albert Füracker and Florian Herrmann connected.
Söder’s election campaign got into crisis after the plagiarism hunter Gabriele Pauli discovered suspicious passages in his bestselling autobiography “Mein Platz ist in Bayern”. The “Söder laughs” pictures from July are considered the final turning point. They show Söder smirking in the background, while Vice-Prime Minister Hubert Aiwanger complains of persistent headaches and body aches after his yellow fever booster vaccination at the front of the microphones.