A 62-year-old former rival of Angela Merkel who retired from politics nine years ago has emerged as an unlikely early frontrunner to succeed her as leader of Germany’s Christian Democrat party (CDU).
Friedrich Merz is the most popular candidate for the party leadership with ordinary voters, according to two rival polls published on Wednesday.
The surprising results put him ahead of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the current party chairman who is thought to be Mrs Merkel’s preferred successor, and Jens Spahn, the health minister and darling of the right-wing.
They will make troubling reading for Mrs Merkel, who announced this week she will step down as party leader in December but wants to stay on as chancellor until 2021.
There is no love lost between her and Mr Merz, whose political career stalled after he lost a power struggle with her in 2002, and she may find it difficult to forge a working relationship with him as party leader.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's career, in pictures
Mr Merz, who quit politics for the business world in 2009, lost no time in announcing a comeback after Mrs Merkel said she would step down from the party leadership in December.
He has attracted endorsements from powerful party figures and the CDU’s influential business wing, and appears to have taken the other candidates by surprise.
Thirty-three per cent of Germans would prefer to see Mr Merz as the new party leader according to a poll for Spiegel magazine, compared to 19 per cent for Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer and just 6.2 per cent for Mr Spahn.
A rival poll for Bild newspaper had a more slender lead for Mr Merz, on 19 per cent, ahead of 16 per cent for Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer and 8.2 per cent for Mr Spahn.
The party leader will be chosen by delegates at the CDU party conference in Hamburg in December, and Mr Merz has secured the support of several influential figures.
“The new leader has to give new impetus and momentum to a dispirited party. I think Friedrich Merz is the most likely to do this,” Wolfgang Bosbach, a prominent former CDU MP said.
“He has the potential to give the party a clear profile again,” said Alexander Mitsch, the head of a conservative group within the CDU said.
But with the party’s powerful regional associations yet to decide who they will support, and other possible candidates still to declare whether they will stand, the race remains open.