Germans have soured on Chancellor Merz — can they trade him?

It is the hot topic this week in Berlin: Does German Chancellor Friedrich Merz still have the backing of his own party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), and the coalition partners, Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD)? Will he be ousted? How would that work? Can he just step down? Support for the chancellor has reached a record low: In the latest Deutschlandtrend representative survey, conducted by pollsters Infratest-Dimap for German public broadcaster ARD in early September, only 13% of respondents said Merz was doing a good job. In early September, Merz's CDU suffered a resounding loss in the state of Saxony-Anhalt 's parliamentary election, seeing the party's result halved from the 2021 election.