German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is losing support on a daily basis: Whereas the Infratest-Dimap poll, published on October 2, gave the opposition AfD 27 percent, and Merz’s Christian Democrats only 20 percent, another poll, the INFAS poll, published on Sunday, saw the AfD already at 30 percent, and the CDU-CSU at only 18 percent. The “best” rating that Merz personally now has, is a mere 10 percent support, with 88 percent opposition in the Infratest poll.

The Social Democrats (SPD), the government coalition partner of the CDU-CSU, received 13 percent last Friday, and 14 percent on Sunday. The said two polls give the government only 32-33 percent popular support. Still, Merz is committed to staying on as Chancellor, claiming there is no alternative to him, nor to the government policy which would keep Germany and Europe stable. A pattern of mass protests and increasing friction inside the government, however, shows that the government policy is making Germany volatile and ungovernable. In fact, the situation in the coalition is so fragile that Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier grabbed the telephone last week to call up the Finance Minister/Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil (SPD), and the Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) separately, to voice his concern about an impending collapse of the government. It survived the past week, but will it survive the current week, or the week after?

An overdue change of policy has to include a change of Chancellor, but so far, no candidate for the replacement of Merz has stepped forward from among his Christian Democrats. A first round of probing replacement options two weeks ago found all three potential candidates—Hendrik Wüst (Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia), Daniel Guenther (Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein) and Markus Söder (Minister President of Bavaria)—unwilling to take the job. Will they, or someone else, wait until the rating of Merz is at zero?

The AfD has offered behind the scenes ) the CDU-CSU toleration and case-by-case support for a minority government—without Merz. But that alone would not make Germany more governable and stable, particularly if the Christian Democrats would try to continue the same policies that have sent them downwards in the polls and in the three state parliament elections in Saxony-Anhalt (September 6), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , and Berlin (both on September 20). The demise of Merz would have to come as a package, together with the demise of his policies against Russia and for Ukraine; against budget austerity and over-expensive rearmament; and against the return of nuclear power. But the more the German crisis approaches the punctum saliens, the more necessary a change becomes, a change that would have the support of the majority of the population. The longer the crisis and the political paralysis lasts, however, more mass protests and unrest, and more turbulence and instability are inevitable.