Chancellor Friedrich Merz faces a crisis of confidence after the defeat of the CDU

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is facing a crisis of confidence within his own party after the defeat of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the elections in Saxony-Anhalt. The Guardian writes about this.

According to the publication, Merz is so unpopular that his party did not want him to participate in the election campaign. “Mertz’s face was not on any posters, and when he visited the state capital, Magdeburg, he was carefully protected from the public,” the article notes.

The authors of the material attribute this to the result of the elections on September 6, in which the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 43.8 percent of the vote, more than doubling the Chancellor’s CDU (17.2 percent). The publication calls this defeat “catastrophic.”

The Guardian emphasizes that two more votes will be held on September 20 - in Berlin and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the CDU is predicted to face new failures. Merz's leadership, observers say, has "become a liability" and his authority will be challenged sooner rather than later. For now, he is protected only by the lack of a convincing alternative and the constitutional obstacles to a sudden change of leadership in Germany.

The publication also notes that the scale of the current moment goes far beyond party tactics: “Germany is entering a period of political upheaval, when the core values ​​of the post-war republic are in question.”