Debacle: ruling CDU failed to reach the 5% threshold and is out of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania regional parliament.
As it was widely expected, failing German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has refused to resign after the new round of electoral humiliations for his CDU party.
Merz, who 78% of voters want out of office, has led his party into a stunning series of defeats, bested by right-wing AfD in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and ousted by neo-communists of ‘The Left’.
It’s been rumored that members of his party want to ‘pull a Starmer’ on him: a ‘palace coup’ where the CDU would change the leader (and therefore crown a new Chancellor) without calling for a new election and without having the people vote for this new leadership.
But who would be this German equivalent of Andy Burnham?
Today, a new leader stepped in from the wings back onto the political stage, vowing to lead the CDU back to its roots.
Watch: Angela Merkel leaves a bakery in Berlin, greeting fans.
Almanya eski başbakanı Angela Merkel, başkent Berlin’de, bir fırından çıkarken görüntülendi.
Çıkışta kendisine seslenen çevredekilere selam veren Merkel, daha sonra aracına binip bölgeden ayrıldı. pic.twitter.com/Mf8Ij63CMJ
— Aykırı (@aykiri) September 21, 2026
Politico reported:
“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 did not mention the elections or Merz.
“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.”
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