Friedrich Merz, Markus Söder or Hendrik Wüst – who has what it takes to be the Union’s chancellor candidate in the next federal elections? That’s what the Germans say.
The Union is already keenly concerned with this question: who should run as chancellor candidate in the 2025 federal elections? The following three names keep coming up in the race: CDU leader Friedrich Merz, CSU leader Markus Söder and Hendrik Wüst, Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia (CDU). A representative survey by the market and opinion research institute Ipsos now shows who the citizens of Germany see as most suitable:
According to the results, Söder comes out on top with 23 percent of those polled voting for him. Wüst brings it to twelve percent, Merz brings up the rear with eleven percent. However, it should be sobering for all three candidates that more than a third of the citizens (35 percent) do not consider any of the three politicians mentioned to be suitable for a chancellor candidacy.
Söder scores with Union and AfD voters
If you look at the results according to the voting intentions of the citizens, it becomes clear that Söder can score points especially among supporters of the Union: 43 percent of this voter group voted for him, Merz only got 22 percent here, Wüst 16 percent.
A similar order can be seen among AfD voters: 28 percent voted for Söder, nine percent for Merz and three percent for Wüst.
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A different picture emerges when you look at the votes of the Greens voters: Here, every fourth sees Wüst as the most suitable candidate for Chancellor in the Union, while Merz and Söder both only get nine percent. Merz is most likely to score points among FDP supporters: At 23 percent, he is only one percentage point behind Söder.
Merz unpopular with women
Looking at the results by gender shows that Merz is significantly less popular among women (seven percent) than among men (16 percent). Wüst also has more male supporters (14 percent) than female (ten percent). Söder scores almost equally among women (22 percent) and men (24 percent).
With regard to the level of education of the citizens, Söder is particularly popular with less educated people: In this group, 29 percent support him, four times as many people as Merz (seven percent) and almost three times as many as Wüst (ten percent).
The results are based on an online survey of 1,000 eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 75 in Germany, which was conducted from May 5 to 7, 2023. Ipsos weighted the survey participants representatively according to age, gender, education, region and voting behavior in the last federal election.
