Merkel spoke at the opening of a Bundestag exhibition on former Chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt, before joining Bundestag President Julia Klöckner for a discussion on Adenauer, democracy and politics. Adenauer, West Germany’s first postwar chancellor and the CDU’s first leader, helped shape the party as a broad-based Christian movement.
Most of the on-stage conversation focused on art, with the lack of more in-depth political discussion notable given the scale of the CDU’s recent losses.
On Sept. 6, the far-right AfD won 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt, more than doubling its 2021 result, while Merz’s CDU fell to 17.2 percent — its worst-ever showing in the eastern state.
On Sunday, the far-right AfD won around 38 percent of the vote in northeastern Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, beating Merz’s CDU by a hefty margin, which suffered its worst-ever result in postwar Germany and crashed out of the state parliament. In Berlin, the CDU finished behind The Left.
Merz called the latest defeats a “disaster” and pledged to overhaul the CDU’s platform, structure and public image. An ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll earlier this month found just 13 percent of voters satisfied with Merz’s work — a historically low rating.
Merkel then turned to the question of how politicians can reconnect with voters.
“We have to acknowledge that the question of how to maintain a connection with citizens and potential voters has changed dramatically,” she said. If politicians want to spread positive messages, she added, they must show the public “what guides my thinking, where I have doubts and what I have considered.”