The year of truth begins for Merz

The new year will be the most important of his career for CDU leader Merz. The question of his candidacy for chancellor will be decided in the fall at the latest. Söder is still lurking in the background. But there is actually much more at stake.

If there is one thing that the sparrows in Berlin are whistling from the rooftops, it is that Friedrich Merz wants to become Chancellor. He does not say this publicly and avoids the constant questions about it. In principle, however, every CDU chairman is a candidate for chancellor by virtue of his office. He even wrote in his latest "Merz-Mail": "Anyone who enters politics in Germany and is reasonably talented must want to become Chancellor." Wolfgang Schäuble, whose life he paid tribute to in his weekly newsletter, once told him this. We can assume that Merz considers himself to be "reasonably talented".

2024 will be the year of truth for Merz. He can tick off his first two years at the helm of the CDU as "so far, so good". But now everything is at stake, his decades-old ambition to reach the very top. The question of his candidacy for chancellor is to be decided in late summer. Actually, it all comes down to Merz: he is the CDU leader and therefore the frontrunner. In the RTL and ntv trend barometer, the CDU has roughly as many votes as the SPD, Greens and FDP combined. The Union has also celebrated successes in state elections, most recently in Hesse, for example. Merz's popularity ratings are poor, but so are those of incumbent Olaf Scholz. Nevertheless, the chancellorship project will not be a sure-fire success.

First of all, there are the elections this year, which will help decide Merz's momentum. The first is the by-election in Berlin in February, where the 2021 Bundestag election will have to be partially repeated. It will not change the situation in the Bundestag, but it is a first test of the mood. Can the CDU/CSU translate its good poll ratings into election results? The prospects are good - after all, the CDU was also the strongest party in the repeat election to the House of Representatives a year ago.

Test case European elections

The European elections in June are more important. It is the only nationwide ballot this year. This makes it very meaningful. The elephant in the room is the AfD. How strong will the right-wing populists be? After all, they are the most euro-critical party. Officially, the candidates have gone chalk and are no longer calling for the EU to be wound up. But beneath the surface, there are still many who have nothing to do with it, as could be seen at the European Party Conference last summer. How successful is the CDU, which sees itself as the European party par excellence, in countering this? Merz himself said that the refugee issue would be decisive. His analysis in a nutshell: the more the number of asylum seekers falls by then, the better. One could add: The better for him too.

The state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg will follow in September. The AfD is playing for victory there and could become the strongest force according to polls. In Thuringia it would outperform the Left Party, in Brandenburg the SPD and in Saxony the CDU. There, the struggle of Minister President Michael Kretschmer is like walking a tightrope. His statements are sometimes indistinguishable from AfD-speak. Is he talking down to the competition from the right? Or is he picking up their sympathizers? Is he even broadening the voter spectrum of the democratic parties? The debate is ongoing.

The elections in eastern Germany are particularly important for Merz because he once set out to win back voters from the AfD. His old statement that he wanted to halve the AfD is constantly catching up with him. Today, he says that in view of what he sees as the miserable performance of the traffic light coalition, this would not be possible. He could be right insofar as it is not only the CDU that determines how strong or weak the AfD's support is. It is by no means only CDU voters who are switching to the AfD. The SPD and the Left Party are also losing voters to them. Nevertheless, Merz's appeal was to strengthen the CDU's conservative profile, which was supposed to make the party more successful again in the East after the Merkel years.

Risk factor: Merz

These three state elections are therefore fateful for Merz - a successful result will give him a decisive tailwind for the K question. Poor election results in the federal states, on the other hand, always fall back on the federal party. Markus Söder is likely to see this as his opportunity. That is why he has called for a decision on his candidacy to be made only after these elections. Merz, on the other hand, would prefer the matter to be clarified beforehand. The two had a long-distance skirmish about this last summer. However, there are rumblings from within the CDU/CSU that no one is in the mood for a big fight like the one between Söder and Armin Laschet.

NRW Minister President Hendrik Wüst also has an iron in the fire. He is trying to present himself as a man of the center, governing in Düsseldorf with the Greens - who are Merz's "main opponent in the government". Wüst repeatedly takes more or less clear swipes at Merz. In a much-noticed interview with the "Frankfurter Allgemeine" newspaper, he said that his place was "currently" in Düsseldorf. At the end of December, he demanded a say in the candidacy for chancellor in "Der Spiegel". Previously, Merz's aide and CDU Secretary General Carsten Linnemann had spoken out in favor of the federal chairman as a candidate in the "Welt". However, it does not currently look like Wüst will run. He would first have to declare himself.

So all signs are actually pointing to Merz. That leaves the risk factor of Friedrich Merz. The Sauerland native makes a point of not speaking in such a controlled manner as Chancellor Scholz, for example. He wants to be understood. However, he occasionally doesn't manage this very well. Cue "little pashas", his strange formulation that the CDU is the true "alternative for Germany" or the unnecessary beer tent slogan during the Bavarian election campaign that Kreuzberg is not Germany. So far, such slogans have not done him any harm. However, the excitement after the summer interview on ZDF was a bit more serious. He said that we had to "shape things together with the AfD" when talking about a possible collaboration with the AfD. His loyal supporters then had to explain at great length how he meant this. And that the "firewall" was still standing. This remains a risk for the actual election campaign. And Laschet's laughter in the flood zone showed that supposedly minor details can destroy entire election campaigns. In any case, the road to the chancellor's office is still a long one.