CDU presidium meets as Merz faces criticism over secret vote for AfD Landtag president

A secret vote in Magdeburg

On Tuesday, 6 October, the 83-member Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt elected its president, and the AfD's Tobias Rausch, 35, received more votes than planned, four more according to NZZ. The ballot was secret, which is at the centre of the dispute. Sven Schulze, the outgoing state premier and CDU parliamentary group leader, had recommended that his MPs abstain, but Schulze and three other members later said they had voted no, while one CDU member was absent due to illness. Of the 14 CDU MPs present, only five abstentions were recorded, yet nine CDU MPs told FOCUS online they had abstained, and ten told media the same. NZZ concludes that at least five CDU MPs must have lied, while noting that the evidence is circumstantial and no proof exists.

Merz's false-flag remark

On Wednesday, 7 October, Merz warned against hasty conclusions and said it was far from certain that the dissenters came from the CDU. According to FOCUS, he suggested that votes for Rausch could also have come from the SPD, the Greens or the Left. In his words:

False-flag operations do not only exist in the military realm, they also exist in politics.

Within the CDU the remark is contested. Merz loyalists and conservative politicians consider it right to point to a possible staged scandal, while others see it as a sign of weakness in the party chairman. The Bundestag member David Preisendanz told the Tagesspiegel:

We are currently fully playing the AfD's game plan. That this is evidently not being noticed leaves me increasingly dumbfounded.

FOCUS reports that a new debate about Merz's future has not yet erupted, but critics say he must now show leadership, including on this issue.

Election losses and a party in crisis

On 20 September the CDU failed the 5% threshold in a Landtag election for the first time, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Merz called the result a disaster shortly after 6 pm that evening, before it was clear the party would fall below the threshold. The same evening, Die Linke overtook the CDU in Berlin for first place and is now trying to form a government with the SPD and the Greens. Two weeks earlier in Saxony-Anhalt the CDU had lost nearly 20 percentage points, and AfD politician Ulrich Siegmund will stand for the post of Minister-President in December. Federal polls put the CDU below 20%, compared with 28.5% at the federal election in early 2025, 17 months after the black-red government was sworn in.

FOCUS recalls that in 2020 Thomas Kemmerich of the FDP was briefly elected Minister-President of Thuringia with votes from the AfD and CDU, and that Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer resigned as CDU chair that year over the Thuringian crisis. Asked by Spiegel whether Merz is the right chancellor, JU chief Johannes Winkel answered:

To be honest: so far, this has not sufficiently worked.

Presidium retreat and coalition strain

The CDU presidium, with about 25 members, meets on Sunday and Monday, 11 and 12 October. The agenda covers the response to voter dissatisfaction with the black-red government, the reform course on pensions, care and health, whether the CDU must become more conservative to win back voters, and the firewall toward the AfD and the Left. Hesse's Minister-President Boris Rhein told Welt am Sonntag that the party must address cost of living, security, migration and jobs, while Thuringia's Minister-President Mario Voigt demanded a concrete reduction in living costs. The SPD suspects CDU MPs in Saxony-Anhalt of having voted for the AfD president, which it sees as breaking a taboo, while the Union warns the SPD against cooperating with the Left in Berlin. Wolfram Weimer, state minister for culture in the Chancellery, told Bild:

If the SPD party leaders do not immediately and clearly prevent a left-wing alliance in Berlin, that would be a vote of no confidence in our coalition.

What comes next

Leadership figures expect Merz to present a convincing plan for how the party can recover, and one member of the leadership said that without one the party's escalation potential would grow. Handelsblatt reports that the outcome of the retreat is open.