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CDU politician Merz, Röttgen
Photo: Felix Zahn / photothek / IMAGO
The CDU's nomination phase will start next Saturday, and candidates can apply for party chairmanship until mid-November.
Finally, in December, around 400,000 CDU members will be able to vote, and a party congress in January will then formally elect the base candidate for office.
No candidate has yet officially declared himself, in particular ex-parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz and foreign politician Norbert Röttgen are taking action.
Health Minister Jens Spahn, parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus and SME Union leader Carsten Linnemann are also named.
So far all men from North Rhine-Westphalia, no women.
If the Germans had the choice, Merz and Röttgen would be clearly ahead with 23 and 26 percent approval respectively.
This was the result of a survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL.
However, 20 percent were given the option "someone else", which indicates a certain dissatisfaction with the field of applicants.
The statistical error is 2.5 percent, which is why a clear favorite cannot be assumed here.
But one thing is clear: Carsten Linnemann, Ralph Brinkhaus and Jens Spahn are far behind.
If the supporters of the CDU and CSU are filtered out, a different picture emerges: Among the Union sympathizers Merz comes to 37 percent, Röttgen clearly follows with 24 percent.
Again, the rest of the field is far behind, especially for Spahn.
However, if only Merz and Röttgen compete against each other, the Germans, but not the Union supporters, have a clear favorite among them.
Around half of Germans are unequivocally or more in favor of Röttgen, Merz only achieved 33 percent here.
The Union supporters, however, are divided on this question, Merz and Röttgen are on par, taking into account the statistical error.
Of course, it is important to note that Union supporters are not identical to CDU members.
There is hardly any movement on the Sunday issue.
The SPD is still ahead of the Union parties, the Greens, FDP and, to a lesser extent, AfD are fighting for third place, while the left sticks to the five percent mark.
You can find out more about the Civey method here.
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