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Foreign politicians with increasing chances of outsiders: CDU politician Röttgen
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Jonas Güttler / dpa
The decision should have been made at the end of this week: The CDU finally wanted to elect its new chairman.
For the party, a nerve-wracking power struggle would have come to an end.
But the CDU top decided to postpone the party congress in view of the corona situation - probably to mid-January.
The candidate Friedrich Merz claimed that his competitor Armin Laschet only wanted to use this time window to increase his popularity.
The NRW Prime Minister rejected this resolutely.
What neither of them had expected: That the third candidate Norbert Röttgen could still be dangerous for them.
If the mood in the population has its way, this would be exactly the case.
A survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL shows that Röttgen is now doing significantly better than Laschet - and almost as good as Merz.
When asked who is most suitable for the CDU chairmanship, more than 27 percent voted for Röttgen.
This brings him closer to Friedrich Merz, who received a good 33 percent of the vote.
Laschet, on the other hand, is far behind with less than 13 percent.
In contrast to earlier SPIEGEL surveys, Jens Spahn was not available this time.
The Federal Minister of Health stood behind Laschet as a tandem partner in February.
His increasing popularity during the pandemic led to discussions in the CDU as to whether he should not swap roles with Laschet.
In the last survey, a good 23 percent of those questioned were in favor of Spahn as CDU boss.
But last week Laschet ruled out such a change with Spahn.
It now seems that the supporters of a Spahn candidacy in the survey have largely switched to Röttgen.
The opinion of the general population is of course not decisive for the CDU chairmanship, the choice is made by the 1001 delegates.
An analysis of the survey on party preferences shows, however, that the Union supporters also think significantly more of Röttgen than of Laschet.
Merz 'lead in this group is more comfortable at 43 percent, Röttgen is around 20 percentage points behind him.
Merz is also clearly the most popular among supporters of the FDP and AfD.
The situation is different with supporters of the SPD and the Greens, with Röttgen each reaching more than 40 percent approval.
Overall, Röttgen is ahead of Laschet in all groups - a constellation that would have been hard to imagine at the beginning of the year.
In addition to the open candidate race and the unanswered questions about holding a digital party congress, the CDU faces another challenge.
Because after the election of the chairman, the question of the candidate for chancellor for the federal election arises.
In the general population, however, none of the three presidential candidates did well.
Most Germans continue to consider CSU boss Markus Söder to be the most suitable candidate for chancellor of the Union.
This is shown by another Civey poll for SPIEGEL.
The Bavarian head of government has apparently convinced many people with his crisis management in the corona pandemic, although the infection situation in his state was rarely better than elsewhere.
More than 40 percent of the participants spoke out in favor of Söder, just under 20 percent in favor of Friedrich Merz.
Norbert Röttgen only got 8.4 percent - which is also due to the fact that with him as CDU boss a candidate for Chancellor Söder would be most likely.
It is less likely that Merz or Laschet will give up in favor of Bayern.
For Friedrich Merz, the result among Union supporters is particularly sobering.
Only just under 22 percent of those surveyed from their own camp trust him to run for chancellor, almost 56 percent consider Söder to be the candidate with the best chances.
SPD and Green supporters would prefer Söder or Röttgen to Merz.
The only problem: Markus Söder has not yet applied for the candidacy for chancellor and wants to take his time with the determination.
At the Junge Union party convention last weekend, Söder said: "Not too early, not too early for the candidate for chancellor."
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