Just one in 10 Germans thinks Merz is up to the job after election wipeout

What the report says

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is facing mounting political pressure after a run of poor election results and a record-low approval rating, according to Al Jazeera. In a survey by Germany’s public broadcaster ARD, only about one in 10 respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with his work, the weakest showing for any chancellor since the poll began in 1997.

The report says Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered major setbacks in three state votes. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the party failed to clear the 5 percent threshold needed to enter the state parliament, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) finished first. In Berlin, the CDU came second behind The Left. The article also notes that the AfD won in Saxony-Anhalt earlier in the month, further underscoring the conservatives’ losses.

Al Jazeera says the results have intensified debate inside the CDU and its coalition government with the Social Democrats (SPD). Analysts quoted in the piece argued that Merz has no obvious successor, making a leadership change difficult under Germany’s rules, which require the Bundestag to elect a new chancellor with an absolute majority.

The article places the crisis in a broader context of public frustration over rising living costs, industrial weakness, infrastructure problems and housing shortages. It says the government has outlined reform plans on pensions, taxes, bureaucracy and labor policy, but the election results may make compromise between the CDU and SPD even harder in the months ahead.