When Friedrich Merz first campaigned to lead Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in 2018, he vowed to reduce support for the far-right AfD in half. In a bitter irony, Chancellor Merz’s CDU lost half its support in Saxony-Anhalt and after its resounding victory the AfD has become a direct threat to his leadership, and is beginning to overturn Germany’s postwar political order.
The AfD is more than a political disruptor. German domestic intelligence has classified parts of the party, including its Saxony-Anhalt chapter, as right-wing extremist. Yet the AfD has overtaken the CDU in national polls, while Merz’s approval ratings have fallen to levels unprecedented for a German chancellor.
The AfD has used Merz’s flip flop on the debt brake against him and is questioning defense spending on Ukraine.
Merz also made another defining promise: to beat back the AfD and restore the centrist CDU’s claim to being the true conservative party in Germany. Instead, the election in Saxony-Anhalt will amplify calls, including from within his own party, for him to step aside.
The CDU’s predicament is not surprising. Merz has never been a particularly beloved figure, and the grand coalition between the conservatives and the Social Democratic Party was hardly the outcome German voters desired after the federal election last year.
The age of anger
The AfD began in 2013 as a movement of anti-euro skeptics. It has since become a nationwide force, building its constituency through relentless opposition to immigration, nativist appeal and efforts to relativize Germany’s Nazi past. An anemic German economy and frustration with the established parties have accelerated its rise. The AfD is now the leading political party in Germany with support from nearly one-third of German voters.
The AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt and other upcoming regional elections could change that dynamic. Although the CDU and the AfD hold overlapping positions on migration and some social questions, the AfD’s hostility toward Germany’s culture of historical remembrance is fundamentally incompatible with the country’s center-right tradition.
The mood of the country can now be read most clearly in the regional elections, where voters are preoccupied with jobs, immigration, schools and public services. These are precisely the areas in which the grand coalition that Merz leads is coming up short.
Across the Atlantic world, Germany's confrontation with extreme nationalist movements is being observed through the light of its history. Germany stands as a reminder of how swiftly democratic norms can erode and an example of a nation that has spent eight decades trying to preserve the lessons of that collapse.
Boldness may not win Merz a second term, but it could help arrest the rise of the AfD.
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