Germany: After 100 days in power, Chancellor Friedrich Merz struggles in the polls

This Thursday will mark exactly 100 days since conservative Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor by the Bundestag, the German National Assembly. He will hardly be in the mood to celebrate the event: less than a third of voters (29%) are satisfied with his performance. Support remains high but declining among his CDU-CSU troops; however, it is already in the minority among voters of the social-democratic SPD, the coalition partner. RTL/ntv television , which published this Forsa poll, has a nice headline: "Merz's popularity plummets."

Even more worrying, if possible, is the fact that voting intentions for the far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) party have once again surpassed those of the CDU-CSU, at 26% against 24%. However, it was precisely AfD voters that Friedrich Merz wanted to address from the moment he was elected, with the aim of "bringing them back into the fold" of the centre-right by taking very tough measures against immigration .

The failure is no less clear on the economy. After surprising his own electorate by releasing the brake on state debt to launch major investments , the Chancellor certainly wins the approval of three-quarters of business leaders – but two-thirds of voters (62%) expect the German economy to deteriorate.

Outside Germany, however, Friedrich Merz's "100 Days" have been viewed rather positively. But his diplomatic activism , in contrast to the discretion of his predecessor Olaf Scholz , could quickly suffer from his unpopularity. He has already offended his conservative base with his decision to halt arms deliveries to Israel that could be used in the war in Gaza.

He has even drawn criticism from the AfD, which embraces the European far right's metamorphosis from anti-Semitic background to defense of Israel, in the name of the fight against Islam. And the stated support for Ukraine of his CDU-CSU-SPD coalition is threatened by the rise of the AfD on the right, but also of Die Linke (at 11%, just behind the SPD, which has fallen to 13%), a radical left also close to Russian theses.