Merz stumbles on after another big election defeat. But for how long?

Friedrich Merz, the pugnacious, stubborn German chancellor, has come out fighting in a desperate attempt to save his chancellorship.

The leader who promised to transform his country’s fortunes when he took power last year suffered another bloody nose at the ballot box from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Sunday.

The hard-right party won state elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, taking 37 per cent of the vote, according to the first exit poll.

It was not the crushing victory the AfD won earlier this month in the other east German state of Saxony-Anhalt, but Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) still took a beating, and his leadership could be on the brink.

Merz’s approval ratings stand at just 10 per cent, with voters weary of his brusque, tough-guy management style, which persists even as he fails to stop the rise of the AfD and deliver on key manifesto pledges.

The irony is that some CDU insiders blame their Social Democratic Party (SPD) coalition partners in the federal government for slowing Merz’s reforms aimed at rebooting Germany’s struggling economy.

The chancellor appeared contrite after the Saxony-Anhalt result and made an uncharacteristic and unconvincing promise to listen more to voters.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a smaller state, with just under 1.6 million people, but the timing, and that of the state elections in Berlin on the same day, was dangerous.

In the capital, voters handed the hard-Left Die Linke a 24.5 per cent victory over the CDU on 20 per cent. The AfD came third, with 16 per cent, the exit poll said.

There have been murmurs of discontent within the CDU, a party not accustomed to replacing its leaders less than two years after coming to power.

Germany as a whole is not used to palace coups after 16 years of Angela Merkel. But Merz’s predecessor, the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, also did not see out his full term; his coalition collapsed because of infighting.

Merz had been on manoeuvres in the days running up to Sunday’s elections.

He cancelled his planned appearance at the UN General Assembly. Party insiders insisted a leader, derided by some as a foreign-policy chancellor, a charge also levelled at former British prime minister Keir Starmer, was needed in Berlin.

Before the exit polls dropped, Merz held a behind-closed-doors meeting with senior party members to challenge them to continue backing him. If they do not, he will demand they name a successor.