Disgruntled German voters want change

The deadly knife attack in Solingen at the end of August was carried out by a Syrian Islamist living in Germany as a refugee awaiting deportation. This incident has had far-reaching repercussions: The federal government decided to significantly tighten its migration and security policy.

However, the center-right bloc of Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Bavaria's regional Christian Social Union (CSU), who make up the largest opposition group in the federal parliament, the Bundestag, are not satisfied with the plans put forward by the center-left government. They are calling for illegal immigrants to be turned back at the borders and are generally questioning the right to asylum.

Permanent controls at the borders

The dispute over the right approach is hitting a nerve among voters. In the Deutschlandtrend survey on public broadcaster ARD, 77% of the 1309 eligible voters polled answered yes to the question: "Do we need a fundamentally different asylum and refugee policy so that fewer people come to us?"

Almost three-quarters said they are in favor of introducing permanent controls at German borders, and 72% are in favor of extending the powers of the security authorities, for example, allowing them to access electronic communications such as chats.

The survey was conducted by pollster infratest-dimap on September 3 and 4.

For 48% of respondents, the topic of refugees and immigration is currently the most important political issue. That is 22 percentage points more than in April of this year. The economy (20%), social injustice (12%) and climate change (12%) follow at a distance.

Feeling unsafe in Germany

The attack in Solingen has not only reignited the debate on immigration but also the debate on crime. 44% of respondents said they feel unsafe in public spaces, twice as many as seven years ago. However, it is especially supporters of the populist parties on the fringes of the political spectrum who say they do not feel safe.

The three governing parties — the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) — are seen as less able to manage immigration than their conservative competitors. The CDU/CSU leads on migration and, even more clearly, on economic issues. At the same time, dissatisfaction with the government has increased further: 84% of respondents say they are less or not at all satisfied with the federal government's work. This is the highest figure since the government took office at the end of 2021.

However, the CDU/CSU can only to a limited extent. Most respondents said they do not believe a CDU/CSU-led government would be any better at solving upcoming problems. If elections were held now, the CDU/CSU would have 33% of the vote, the highest figure for the center-right bloc since March 2021 but still a far cry from their results of previous decades.

The three ruling parties together now stand at only 30%, down from 52% in the last general election in September 2021. The Greens would get their lowest result in 6 years (11%), and the FDP (4%) would fail to clear the 5% threshold for representation in parliament altogether.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) sees small gains nationwide to reach 17%, ahead of Chancellor Scholz's SPD (15%). The populist anti-immigration Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) would win 8%, and the socialist Left Party the BSW split off from has dwindled to 3% and would no longer be represented in the Bundestag.

Who could be the next Chancellor?

The next general election is scheduled for on September 28, 2025. Unlike the presidential system in the United States, voters in Germany do not directly elect the chancellor, who is the head of the government. The top candidate from the party that wins the most votes usually forges a coalition government, and the newly elected members of parliament then approve him or her in a secret ballot.

While the CDU/CSU is expecting to emerge victorious, the bloc still needs to clarify one thing: Who will be its candidate for chancellor?

Sixty-eight-year-old CDU chairman Friedrich Merz, who has never held a government office, has high ambitions, as does CSU leader Markus Söder, who heads a government with the far-right populist Free Voters in Bavaria, and 49-year-old Hendrik Wüst, the head of a coalition government with the Greens in the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Of these three potential candidates, Merz is the least and Söder the most popular with voters. The latter unsuccessfully battled then-CDU leader Armin Laschet for the nomination in 2021 and was forced to back off despite his high popularity ratings. Laschet famously went on to lose the election with a record-poor showing.

Merz, former Chancellor Angela Merkel's long-time inner-party rival, is unlikely to back down. The CDU and CSU have announced their intention to clarify the candidacy for chancellor in the coming weeks.

A tightrope walk for Merz

How he manages the fallout from regional elections in two eastern states is expected to have an impact on Merz's chances. He must be seen to give clear messages without directly interfering in the tricky government building in Saxony and Thuringia, where the regional CDU wants to form a government and needs coalition partners to do so. Merz has personally excluded cooperating not only with the far-right AfD but also with the socialist Left Party, leaving few — if any — options for regional negotiators.

The majority of CDU supporters continue to support their party's decision to exclude the AfD, but most are against shutting out the Left Party. Across party lines, six out of ten voters support the CDU's decision on incompatibility with the AfD and four out of ten support the ban on cooperation with the Left. In both cases, voters in the East have a more inclusive stance.

However, resistance to cooperation with the BSW is also mounting within the CDU. The brand new BSW is a grouping that blends left-leaning economic policies with pro-Russian foreign policy initiatives. Much of this seems unreconcilable with the CDU agenda. Less than half of the eligible voters polled nationwide support BSW participation in government — but in the East, there is a clear majority in favor.

This article was originally written in German.

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