Berlin. Three badly lost state elections in a row, poll numbers below 20 percent and a clearly ailing Chancellor and party leader Friedrich Merz: At its leadership retreat in Berlin, the CDU is looking for a way out of one of the most serious crises in its 80-year history.
At the start, Secretary General Franziska Hoppermann made it clear in a short statement that no quick solution could be expected. The retreat is “not a silver bullet, but the beginning of a process that we are starting both in the federal government and government policy as well as in the party,” she told journalists. It’s about “finding our way back to our old strength and underpinning our claim as a people’s party.”
The statement in the rain in front of the party headquarters lasted 55 seconds. The Secretary General did not answer questions. None of the other members of the executive committee spoke in front of the cameras. When asked what the mood was like, Thuringia's Prime Minister Mario Voigt said: “Rainy”.
The party's approximately 25 top people want to discuss the consequences of the election results in a long discussion. The founder of the opinion research institute Civey, Janina Mütze, should provide some inspiration. Former Federal President Joachim Gauck is invited to dinner at 7 p.m.
The CDU clearly noticed the warning signals from the three state elections in September, said Hoppermann. Now it's about regaining trust, not losing sight of the country's modernization and "addressing the reality of people's lives differently." Merz and Hoppermann do not want to inform about the results at a press conference until Monday afternoon after further meetings of the Presidium and the much larger Board of Directors.
The CDU was thrown out of a state parliament for the first time on September 20th in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In Berlin that same evening she was pushed out of first place by the Left, which is now trying to form a government with the SPD and the Greens. In Saxony-Anhalt the party had lost almost 20 percentage points two weeks earlier. The AfD politician Ulrich Siegmund is now standing for election to the office of Prime Minister in December.
At the federal level, too, the Union has sunk to unprecedented depths. In several surveys, 17 months after the black-red federal government was sworn in, it is below 20 percent - compared to 28.5 percent in the election at the beginning of 2025. It was just six years ago that it reached around 40 percent in surveys.
The debate will focus on the consequences of the black election in September. Will the strict reform course continue, for example in pensions, care and health? And what else is necessary?
“We have to take care of all the issues that are important for normal people: cost of living, security, migration, jobs,” said Hesse’s Prime Minister Boris Rhein before the “Welt am Sonntag” retreat. Thuringia's Prime Minister Mario Voigt specifically called for a reduction in the cost of living: "We have to talk about how people can make life affordable again."
But it is also likely to be about more fundamental questions for the Union. Does the CDU have to become more conservative in order to win back voters? Or vice versa? And what happens next with the firewall towards the AfD and the Left?
The aftermath of the elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin is becoming an ever greater burden for the black-red coalition. This is also likely to play a role in the exam. The SPD suspects CDU MPs of co-electing the AfD state parliament president in Saxony-Anhalt and thus breaking a taboo.
In return, the Union warns the SPD against collaborating with the left in Berlin, which it sees as extremist. Wolfram Weimer, Minister of State for Culture in the Chancellery and Merz confidant, sees the explorations in Berlin as a direct test for the coalition. “If the SPD party leaders do not immediately and clearly stop a left-wing alliance in Berlin, then that would be a vote of no confidence in our coalition,” he told “Bild”.
Merz may get the most support from someone who is not a member of the CDU: Joachim Gauck, who is there as a guest. He recently vehemently opposed calls for Merz to resign in a top-level discussion with “Spiegel”. “If he wanted to do that now, then he would be a complete political idiot,” said the 86-year-old. "That would really be totally damaging. Because any residual trust, especially among those who voted for him, would suffer greatly and would be minimized even further."
