Merz Faces Open 'Kanzlertausch' Succession Speculation Within CDU

With Chancellor Friedrich Merz's personal approval stuck at around 13% — the lowest recorded for a sitting German chancellor in nearly 30 years of Infratest dimap polling — senior CDU figures were reported to be privately discussing a mid-term 'Kanzlertausch' (chancellor swap) that would replace him without dissolving the coalition or calling new elections, a mechanism last used in the 1960s and 1970s. North Rhine-Westphalia minister-president Hendrik Wüst was widely cited as the only figure seen as a credible successor, though analysts including political scientist Kai Arzheimer noted Germany's high constitutional barriers to a mid-term leadership change and the CDU's lack of a clear consensus candidate. Merz, on a summer break as the reports circulated, played down the speculation, saying 'I assume that things will have calmed down a bit by September' — after the September 6 Saxony-Anhalt and September 20 Berlin/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern elections in which the AfD was polling as high as 37–41%.