The Duran Podcast - Merz Election Disaster

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Merz Election Disaster

All right, Alexander, elections in Germany, in Berlin, and in Mecklenburg. And the results are expected, but also shocking, I guess you could say. In Berlin, we have the left winning, D.Linka, they won big. And in Mecklenburg, a CDU collapsed in Berlin. But in Mecklenburg, we have the IFDA winning. We have the SPD doing fairly, fairly well. Looks like the SPD will remain in power, though form a coalition in Mecklenburg. But the IFDA came in first place.

But the big shock is that the CDU did not manage to even make it to the parliament. They did not get the 5% that is needed. 4.8, 4.9%. Mertz called these elections a disaster, but he's not leaving. It's a disaster, but I'm not going anywhere. You're the disaster, Mertz. You're the disaster. Anyway, Alex had your thoughts. Well, I don't think these results were a disaster. I think they were a total apocalyptic catastrophe. I think they actually exceeded my expectations, I know people said that they were predicted, I think the results were even more extreme than was predicted. And I'm going to actually say something which may go against

the views of a lot of people. I think these are even more important results. In fact, much more important results than the result in Saxon-unhaled. Now, the Saxon-un-Halt result was somewhat to be expected. It's a East German lander in the south of the former East Germany. It's a relatively rural area. People there are fairly elderly. It's conservative. It's Christian. It's the sort of place where you would expect the IF debtor to be doing quite well. As I've discussed in programs that we've done recently. Northern East Germany is a very, very different place from southern East Germany. We're now into Prussia. I mean, Mecklenburg-Fortmén, and of course Berlin are part of the old kingdom of Prussia. Mecklenburg-Fortman is absolutely Prussian to its fingertips, which means, by the way,

that it used to produce amazingly good soldiers. It was part of the military tradition of Frederick the Great and all of that, but it is also politically always leaned very, very much to the left. It is absolutely not the place where you would be expecting the IFDAIR to be doing well. And by the way, just for the record, it is also the home state of Angela Merkel, just to say. Well, the IFD came top. It got 38% of the vote in Mecklenburg for parliament. I think that is an even better result.

If you look at the demographics and the electoral history than the one in Saxon-unhalt. And in both cases, both is. Saxon, unhalt, and in Mecklenburg for poor men. The IFDA exceeded its expectations, which by the way tells us that there are people starting to vote for the IFDA who for all sorts of reasons are shy about confirming that fact to German pollsters. That's one possibility.

German pollsters are starting to understate the level of the IFDAIR support, which is another possibility, and perhaps a more plausible one. Now, Meddlenburg-Fortment, to have a breakthrough of this kind for the IFDAire there is astonishing. But, of course, we now come to Berlin. And Berlin is far and away the most left-wing place in Germany. It's got all of the qualities of a capital. Population is youngish. You have all the sort of people there who we might say are part of the counterculture. There's a large immigrant community in Berlin. This is absolutely not the place. You would expect the IFDA to be doing well or to be gaining ground. In fact, they doubled their vote. They're now at 16%. The CDU is falling fast. And I think it's living on borrowed time in Berlin.

So I think these were very, very good results indeed for the IFDA, better than I think they would have expected going into these elections, certainly better than I expected. Now, the party that is facing crisis is the CDU to fall to 4.8 or 4.9 percent, in other words, to be excluded from the regional parliament in Angela Merkel's home state, admittedly, a left-leaning state, but a place where the CDU has always had a respectable presence is dreadful. And for the SPD to come second in a place like Mecklenburg for Polman, which, as I said, leads to the left, is again bad for the SBD. especially given that the Minister President who had been leading the party in Mecklenburg for poor men is apparently quite capable and widely liked.

It seems to me that both of these parties, even in Mecklenburg for poor men, well, even the SPD is sliding in Mecklenburg for poor men, I personally would not be surprised if in future election, you start to see a swing in this area, in this region as well, towards Delinker. Now, what this tells us is that across the former East Germany, in every part now of the former East Germany, in the conservative South and in the formerly socialist North, the CDU has become, toxic. It's losing everywhere in the former East Germany. It is losing in Berlin as well. And in Berlin, it now has the particular humiliation of having lost control in Berlin to

delinca, which, especially by the way in Berlin, I've been to Berlin. I mean, I know Berlin reasonably well. is absolutely the lineal descendant and inheritor of the Socialist Unity Party, what used to be the ruling Communist Party of East Germany, the party that built the Berlin Wall. It now rules all Berlin, including West Berlin. That is incredible. And of course, the SPD, which often was, historically was, the dominant party in West Berlin, that is spiraling downwards.

It is never going to get back in West Berlin because the delinker is pushing it aside. both the right, the traditional right, the CDU and the traditional left are collapsing. And the results we've seen up to now are, of course, in East Germany or former East Germany and West Berlin. But I suspect that West Germany, the results in the West German lander before long are going to start. following the same trend. So this is an extraordinary result, a decisive break with Germany's past. And in some ways, what happens to Friedrich Mertz is given the enormity of what's just taken place, somewhat less important. But to be absolutely clear, he is now a dead man walking. Yeah, I don't understand why why Germans are not voting for the CDU, to be quite honest,

Alexander. The platform of deindustrialization and going to war with Russia is a winner. Absolutely. It's a winning campaign platform. Absolutely. I'm going to destroy the economy and I'm going to take you to war with Russia. Piling up debt, destroy the German welfare state, which, by the way, in Germany was not created by the socialists. It was created first by Bismarck, who was politically on the right, and then

after the Second World War by the CDU. Massively popular program. We're joking around. I mean, yeah. I mean, that was his platform, though. What a bunch of bozos, what a bunch of bozos, the CDU are? I mean, who came up with these things? Who came up with these ideas? Or are they just that freaking possessed and that greedy and that out of touch with everybody. Well, I think they are is the short answer. There are very clever people still in the CDU. I mean, this is not like the Labour Party in Britain

or the Conservative Party in Britain, but you can't find anybody who is remotely convincing. In the CDU, there are still some serious political figures, but obviously, like the SPD, which is in deep eclipse, The CDU also is now also descending and stupidity seems to be taking over and very fast. Wasn't there anyone in the party to pull Mertz aside and say, look, Mr. Chancellor, you've got to stop? You got to stop with this deindustrialization talk.

You got to stop with this military industrial complex nonsense. You've got to stop with this going to war with Russia. You're freaking people out. You're scaring people. You're scaring Germans. You're scaring away our voters, our base. You're telling me there was no one in the CDU to pull Mertz aside and to say enough. Well, they had a meeting.

That scored together all the top people at the CDU on Sunday before the results came through. And they gave him apparently a resounding vote of confidence. So, I mean, that's the answer to your question. It's madness. So the S. Unbelievable. So the SPD, they suffered a lot because of Ollif Schultz, right? Ollis was awful. Yeah. He's proven to be better than Mertz, which is incredible. You say something. But he was awful. And the SPD suffered. They suffered even more by aligning themselves, by being tethered to the CDU. They need to detach from the CDU. Is that

correct? I mean, they need to distance themselves and completely detached from the CDU. The one reason that the party leader in Mecklenburg, the one reason that she is popular is because she has distanced herself from the ruling party, the ruling coalition platform. That's my understanding of things. She has managed to distance herself, and she still didn't manage to win outright. So So the SPD, they've got to detach from the CDU ASAP, like yesterday. They need to tell the CDU, we're done with you guys. Otherwise, they're finished. You are absolutely correct.

But I'm going to say something. That advice was advice that was being given to the SPD years ago. You look at the SPD, which is Germany's oldest political party and has often been Germany's dominant party. It was the dominant party during the time of the Weimar Republic, but then it was also, again, the dominant party in the 1970s, during the time of Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, when it was regularly polling well above 40%. And it was also the dominant party in the time of Gerhard Schroeder. What then happened? What basically sealed the SPD's decline is that after Angela Merkel became Chancellor, the SPD

repeatedly entered into so-called grand coalitions with her. And this caused increasing dissatisfaction on the part of his membership. And already by the penultimate election, which Merkel won, there was increasing cause from the grassroots of the SPD, to break with Merkel, to stop propping her up, to stop propping up what she represented and what the CDU itself had come to represent. The leadership of the SPD liked the cushy jobs in government. They liked the big cars and the drivers and all of that. So they consistently, they continuously ignored that advice and continued to enter into coalitions with the CDU. And they did it again with Friedrich Merz, I think we are now beyond that point when giving that advice matters anymore.

Yes, in theory, I mean, definitely that's what they should do. They should break with the CDU. They should go into opposition. They should try and reconstitute themselves in opposition. But I think it's too late. I think they are past the point of return. I think we're going to see the party continue to decline. Whatever happens now, because there are parties to its left,

delinker first and foremost, which have a hard, more radical, more oppositionist profile, and they're going to win over more people who used to vote for the SPD and who self-identify as left. I was already seeing this when I was in Germany last month. Remember, I was in Rheinlandfals, which is in West Germany. But, you know, some of the young people I was talking to who would once have supported the SPD were making it very clear to me that they're going to support the Lincoln. Yeah, they got to take it to power.

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. What happens to Mertz? Are they going to run the standard playbook? Let's get a new, the Labour, UK playbook. Let's get a new guy who looks like Mertz, talks like Mertz, and let's put them in as the new party leader and just go about our business. Well, I think that's exactly what they're going to do. They're going to have somebody who acts and does all the same things that Mouth does, but has a nicer smile and the smoother voice, which is what has happened with Britain. with Starm about being replaced by Andy Burnham, who comes across a slightly more personable.

I think that is exactly what they're going to do. There are two political figures within the CDU universe who people are talking about. One is Marcus Zoda, who is not actually within the CDU at all. He leads the CSU, which is the CDU sister party. It's actually a Barbarian party. It's independent of the CDU. But to all intents and purposes, the two parties are almost identical ideologies and very similar political and economic philosophies. And they've always been in coalition with each other.

Anyway, Marcus Zerda is the minister-president of Bavaria. He is a tough, experienced political figure. He leaned somewhat to the right, which. is something that people who want to rescue the CDU say the CDU does need to become. It needs to develop a more right-wing profile, which I think has some force, by the way. For the record, he's also someone who in the past has had fairly extensive dealings with a certain Vladimir Putin. and they got on quite well with each other, you can find if you dig deep enough a readout and in fact a film of Zerda and Putin chatting in the Kremlin just a few years ago

after the Maidan events in Ukraine when the sanctions had already been imposed. He was a strong supporter, I remember, of the Nord Stream 5 lines and all of that. You could perhaps, if you were the CDU and you wanted someone who might want to reestablish some kind of dialogue with the Russians, Zerda might possibly be that person, at least in theory. I don't myself think that as any prospect of succeeding at all. I think that the Russians are so cynical and frankly disillusioned with the whole CDU-C-SU set up now, that I don't think they would take ZERD as seriously. But anyway, if that is part of your agenda and you want to replace mouths with somebody,

who is slightly different and slightly more open to talking with the Russians and who you might think the Russians might want to be willing to talk to, then you might want to go for Marcus Zerda. But it would be the first time, as far as I know, that the German Chancellor has come from the CSU. And I suspect, again, there would be quite a few people in the CDU who wouldn't want that anyway. So that's one possibility.

And there's another man called Wurst, who is the head of the CDU, party in Nord Reyn-Westphalen, North Rhine-Westphalia, the biggest of all the German lander. He is younger, somewhat more liberal, if you like, or considered to be more on the progressive liberal side of politics. In other words, he's Andy Burnham to a tea. I'm going to make a guess. that's the man they're going to go for, because he's going to be exactly what you said. The person who continues exactly where Friedrich Mertz left off, but with a smiley face. I don't think the CDU has any ability to actually change course. And of course, Mouts himself absolutely doesn't.

I mean, he said that he wouldn't move a centimeter. And that was what he said a few days ago. And I don't think that's going to change with him. All right. We will end the video there. We are on Substack and we are on locals, the durand.com and go to the Durandshop, pick up some merch. Those links are the description box down below. Take care.