As Alternative für Deutschland continues to rise in the polls, the centre-right CDU find themselves out of options and in a self-destructive messaging spiral

The Christmas holidays are over, the politicians and the media have awakened from their winter sleep, and Germany finds itself in the thick of an election campaign. Almost every day there is a new poll, and in almost every new poll, Alternative für Deutschland gets stronger. An Infratest dimap poll published on 9 January (survey conducted from 6–8 January) pegs them at 20%; a Forschungsgruppe Wahlen poll published on 10 January (survey conducted from 7–9 January) has them at 21%; and the latest INSA poll, published today (survey conducted from 6–10 January) places them at 22%:

For the centre-right CDU and CSU, the story is the opposite – one of a steady decline from the low- to mid-30s in December, to around 30% or just below in the latest surveys. The right-leaning vote overall is holding steady, at around 51%. Support is merely wandering from the acceptable Union parties behind the cordon sanitaire. Every day the establishment loses a few more seats; they vanish into the abyss of the Brandmauer, and the hurdles to the lusted-after CDU/CSU-Green coalition grow ever higher.

Some of this is surely down to the Musk Effect. Musk’s endorsement of the AfD and his conversation with Alice Weidel on Thursday (however much a disappointment I found it be) has surely normalised the party for a small but significant number of German voters. The media vilification of the American tycoon is as unbalanced and hysterical as it is unconvincing …

The latest cover of Stern magazine: “Attack on our election: Fake news, cyber warfare and rabble-rousing – this is how Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin are manipulating the German election.”

… and it comes all too late. Until December, Musk enjoyed mainstream credibility in Germany; our rulers eagerly celebrated his Gigafactory in Berlin-Brandenburg as a sign that all was not so terrible for German industry after all. They made Musk into a symbol for the carbon-free, electrical-vehicle future that awaits us all. It is hard to turn around in an instant and reconstruct the man as literally Hitler.

Musk appearing alongside Chancellor Olaf Scholz in 2022 in Grünheide.

What is further serving to normalise the AfD in the eyes of many voters here in the Federal Republic, are developments in Austria, where Herbert Kickl of the “right-populist” Freedom Party – the FPÖ – is on the verge of becoming Chancellor. The Austrian counterpart to the AfD, in other words, is about to form an entire government, and it will soon be plain for everyone to see that these events will neither usher in the apocalypse nor raise Adolf Hitler from the grave. If the Austrians can manage it, why not Germany?

The CDU and their chancellor candidate, Friedrich Merz, thus find themselves in a curious self-destructive spiral:

With the emergence of a coalition government with the FPÖ under Chancellor Herbert Kickl in Austria, Friedrich Merz now finds it necessary to vehemently reaffirm the cordon sanitaire against the AfD. Our neighbouring country is “proof that we must not pave the way for right-wing populists to gain power,” Merz said on Friday evening … He will countenance no coalition with the AfD.

The CDU candidate for Chancellor, however, went even further – linking nothing less than his political future to the exclusion of the AfD from the government. “I tie my fate as CDU party leader to this,’ Merz said… He went on to explain: “We will not work with a party that is xenophobic, anti-Semitic, that has right-wing extremists and criminals in its ranks – a party that flirts with Russia and wants to leave NATO and the European Union.” …

Merz also drew comparisons with the seizure of power by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in January 1933. He outlined a fantasy scenario that could occur if the AfD are helped into power and not categorically excluded … He explained: “In 2029 they will become the strongest faction, and the next federal election is in 2033,” … adding: “One 33 is enough for Germany.”

That last statement is of course a reference to the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933.

Now you might think that these talking points are extreme, unnecessary and the opposite of what Merz should be saying as his party bleeds support to their populist rivals. A lot of CDU voters, after all, harbour sympathies for the AfD and their political programme, which is why the CDU have spent the last months borrowing so heavily from them. In truth, however, Merz has no choice: He fears that any legitimisation of the AfD will turn the trickle into a flood. Many of his own supporters will reason that if the CDU is to partner with the AfD anyway, they might as well cast their votes for the latter party in hopes of more tightly binding the Union to their election promises. So Merz will continue to alienate his party’s right flank in the desperate hope that stigmatising the AfD will nevertheless salvage enough support to secure his chancellorship come February.

That is the whole logic of the cordon sanitaire, its whole purpose, and the tactic is plainly unsuitable against the second-strongest party in Germany. Merz pursues it only because he has no good options. What would really help the CDU at this dark hour, is another manufactured nationwide freakout “against the right” of the kind we had last January. That pageantry, however, took the media machine months and months to prepare, and they blew all their material last year. There is nothing left to do but screech impotently about Nazis and hope the fulminations are enough to keep the Union Parties above water.

It is not inconceivable that the AfD cross the finish line in February neck-and-neck with the CDU/CSU, perhaps with 25% of the vote.