Support for Merz’s party hits record low as AfD surges – poll
Nationwide support for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance has collapsed to a historic low following a series of defeats in regional elections, a new poll suggests.
The bloc’s popular backing stood at just 18%, its worst in German postwar history, according to a survey conducted by the INSA polling institution on behalf of Bild.
The poll put the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) at 30%, the highest since the party was established in 2013. It remains the most popular party in Germany by a wide margin, the poll suggests. The CDU/CSU’s junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats and the Greens are polling at 14% each, with the Left Party at 10%.
The survey was conducted September 28 to October 2 among 1,202 eligible voters; the results were published on Saturday.
Support for the CDU/CSU has fallen sharply since Merz took office as chancellor in May 2025. INSA put the bloc at around 30% shortly before he assumed the post, compared with 18% now.
Merz has been described as Germany’s least popular head of government in around 30 years. He came to power following snap elections in February 2025, promising to revive Germany’s struggling economy, but has since poured more money into the military while blaming economic problems on Germans themselves.
He has told citizens to work more and argued that the “welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed.” In May, his government announced plans for social spending cuts and unveiled an unpopular pension reform.
The survey also came after the CDU suffered defeats to the AfD in the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, results Merz described as a “disaster.”
The right-wing party won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt and 38.3% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The CDU finished a distant second in Saxony-Anhalt with 17.5% and failed to clear the electoral threshold in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where it received just 4.9%.
Despite the defeats, Merz said he will not change course and will keep focusing on the military buildup and antagonizing Russia. “I will not deviate by a single millimeter from my fundamental conviction that, especially now, we must defend our freedom against Russia,” he stated in early September.
Moscow has dismissed Berlin’s claims regarding the supposed ‘Russian threat’ as “nonsense.”
