Merkel sidesteps German conservatives’ election losses as pressure mounts on Merz

German political heavyweight Angela Merkel avoided discussing her party’s latest election defeats on Monday, instead backing the Christian Democratic Union to return to its identity as a broad-based “people’s party.”

The party and its current leader, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, are under pressure following disastrous election results that saw them lose to the far-right Alternative for Germany.

Merkel, who led Germany from 2005 to 2021, did not mention the elections or Merz directly. Her only apparent reference to Sunday’s results came obliquely: “On a day like today, and after an evening like yesterday, it is perhaps worth thinking once again about what we can take from Konrad Adenauer,” she said.

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.”