Chancellor Angela Merkel is still Germany’s most trusted politician, despite being the architect of Europe’s migrant crisis and her party seeing its worst election results since the 1940s.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician scored 60 points with Germans, according to broadcaster n-tv’s trend barometer published Tuesday.
Dr Merkel is followed by her CDU party leader successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer — referred to in German media as AKK and thought of by some as a ‘Mini-Merkel’ ready to give Germany more of the same — with 55 points. Not far behind is Green Party chief Robert Habeck (50 points), and Social Democratic Party (SPD) deputy leader Olaf Scholz with 47 points.
Amongst supporters of right-populist anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) supporters, Merkel and her allies do particularly badly. The Chancellor scored 15 points, Merkel protege AKK at 20 points, with only Friedrich Merz, who challenged the country’s asylum policies, scoring above midway at 53 points with AfD supporters.
The support, being much the same at the end of 2018 as the beginning, comes despite Merkel suspending the European Union’s asylum laws in autumn 2015 to invite more than one million unvetted third world migrants to the country, which resulted in widespread sex assaults, terrorist attacks, and a rise in crime and social care costs.
In September 2017, Merkel’s CDU suffered its worst national election defeat since 1949, her party also falling in local elections in Hesse and in her home state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, as well as Merkel’s sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) suffering a bad result in Bavaria.
On the international stage, Merkel, once hailed as the leader of Europe, has been criticised by President Donald Trump for Germany’s failure to fulfill her NATO commitments, leaving the U.S. picking up the tab to protect Europe.
In neighbouring France, however, the citizens are far more reactive to the shortcomings of their elected leaders with Macron’s popularity hitting historic lows at just 25 per cent in November.
The antipathy to Macron’s reforms has been most recently exemplified by the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests. Protests, sparked by rising fuel taxes, have been ongoing for two months, with activists recently attempting to storm Macron’s holiday retreat of Fort de Brégançon.