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CDU politicians Röttgen, Merz, Braun
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
At 6 p.m. on the dot, the first stage of the long road to renewal for the CDU ended this Wednesday.
Until then, CDU members could apply for the chairmanship - now the base decides in a primary election who is to be elected as the new party leader at a federal party conference in January.
In the running are: Ex-parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz, foreign politician Norbert Röttgen, the executive minister of the Chancellery Helge Braun - all members of the Bundestag.
If the Union supporters have their way, Merz is the favorite in this dispute: In a survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL, 56 percent of CDU and CSU sympathizers rated it as positive if the 66-year-old would become the next CDU boss.
Röttgen comes here to a value of 45 percent, Braun ranks 31.
In the surveys, the respondents did not have to choose between the candidates, rather the three candidates were each asked individually.
You can find out more about the Civey method here.
Clear rejection for Merz
The picture is different for the total electoral population.
Here Merz and Röttgen experience a similarly high level of popularity (35 and 37 percent), Merz, however, receives significantly more negative votes: 51 percent rate a possible choice as negative, at Röttgen it is only 34 percent.
Braun alone comes up with similarly high negative values as Merz, he is here in the survey at 49 percent.
Merz is applying for the post of CDU boss for the third time.
In order to renew the party, he proposed at his side the former Berlin Health Senator Mario Czaja as future Secretary General and the 34-year-old member of the Bundestag Christina Stumpp from Baden-Württemberg as Deputy Secretary General.
However, the deputy post does not yet exist - it would have to be created through an amendment to the statutes.
Like Merz, Röttgen also promised a renewal in his candidacy.
He was running "in the deep conviction that there is no going on like this," said Röttgen.
Should he be elected, he would propose Franziska Hoppermann, MP from Hamburg, as the new CDU General Secretary.
The 49-year-old Braun, on the other hand, is a confidante of the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he has served as Chancellery Minister since March 2018.
Last Thursday he announced his application for the chairmanship.
Nomination denied
In addition to the three men, the Brandenburg CDU politician Sabine Buder also wanted to apply for chairmanship, but her district association refused her nomination on Tuesday evening.
In the Sunday question, the SPD is still ahead of the Union, which could easily win the favor of the voters.
The coming weeks will show whether the recovery is just a trend or a trend reversal.
The Liberals lost points in the Sunday poll: the FDP fell from 15 percent at the end of October to 12 percent.
The approval ratings for the Greens (15 percent), AfD (11 percent) and leftists (5 percent) remain unchanged.