Who will be the next CDU chairman?

[mileslunn]

I think Merz has the slight advantage as those who felt Merkel strayed too far to the centre are probably more motivated than those who want to continue with how she governed which is what AAK more or less is.  On electability it gets a bit trickier.

Merz: Will help drive down both AfD and FDP, also might be able to get AfD to agree to abstain on all bills that the government could fall over.  On the other hand pretty much kills any chance the Greens or SPD will agree to work with him.  Also might drive some centrists over to the Greens or SPD

AAK: Could easily work with Greens and SPD, but would probably help both AfD (Merkel II) and FDP (she favours raising the top marginal rate to over 50% which might be popular on the left, but won't go over well amongst FDP base).  Nonetheless greatly reduces the chances of Greens coming in first, or a Red-Red-Green coalition being even feasible.

Due to where the CDU is placed on the political spectrum it is not obvious who is more electable and also with leadership races not always whom is most electable wins either.  Both Trump in the US and Corbyn in the UK seemed like bad choices yet both did far better than expected even if both were more about pandering to the base than appealing to middle of the road voters.

[mileslunn]

Merz: Will help drive down both AfD and FDP, also might be able to get AfD to agree to abstain on all bills that the government could fall over.  On the other hand pretty much kills any chance the Greens or SPD will agree to work with him.  Also might drive some centrists over to the Greens or SPD

Friedrich Merz has recently taken a hard left turn, putting the AfD on par with the NSDAP and decribing them as "openly national socialist" while publicly praising the Greens' merits as a potential future coalition partner for the CDU. Of course that's also part of an opportunistic ploy to steal votes from AKK. Could possibly backfire on him since it's maybe a bit too obvious that he's just trying to sell us bullsh**t here.

That will likely hurt him as while people like politicians who are open minded and willing to change views if evidence shows original ideas don't work, they hate opportunists who change their views just because they think it will help them politically.  In his case it looks like he is the latter not the former.