Angela Merkel to step up battle against right-wing AfD

It's only taken three years, but German chancellor Angela Merkel has conceded she needs to take do more to win over conservative voters as they jump ship to the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Dr Merkel reportedly told senior figures on Monday that the time had come to “step up the approach to conservative voters right of the political centre”.

After those remarks leaked on Tuesday, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader denied that she was poised for a fundamental shift in policy to tackle the rise of the right-wing AfD.

Young Germans dub this approach “merkeln” – a political strategy of simultaneously making and not making a decision that has been key to Dr Merkel’s successful decade in power.

According to the Bild tabloid, the German leader told party allies that instead of “bashing” the AfD and its voters – and creating a “solidarity effect” that binds them together – her party must “grapple with other opinions, including those of the AfD, without foam at the mouth and without blanket prejudice”.

Anti-bailout alliance

The new party, founded as an anti-bailout alliance in 2013, now occupies half of Germany’s 16 federal parliaments after broadening its policy to include a migration-critical platform. With three further state elections looming this year, the timing of Dr Merkel’s remarks is interesting: a day after the AfD agreed the main points of a party programme. The 78-page document attracted headlines for its strident anti-Islam tone. However, elsewhere the document backs policies that, a decade go, were unremarkably conservative CDU trademarks: support for nuclear power, military service and the traditional family.

As the AfD gathers momentum across Germany, pulling in bailout critics and migration sceptics, Dr Merkel appears to have realised that modernising her party in pursuit of young, urban voters has left her with a fight on her hands to retain traditional, conservative CDU voters the party has taken for granted.

On a visit to a French school in Berlin on Tuesday, the German leader insisted there was "no new strategy" and that her party had "enough arguments" to tackle the AfD. While CDU sources said her remarks in Bild were not 100 per cent accurate, they agreed the party needed to do more to win over voters.

Political coat-tails

Regardless of what Dr Merkel said or didn’t say, the effect is the same: it ends a decade of the CDU riding the political coat-tails of Dr Merkel’s own personal popularity. That approach secured the CDU/Merkel re-election twice but, thanks to the AfD’s arrival, may not work a third time in 2017.

But tackling the AfD brings its own challenges, according to political analysts.

“Currying favour with AfD voters won’t work, Merkel has to draw a clear line between her and them,” said Prof Manfred Güllner of the Forsa polling institute. He suggested a winning strategy lies in appealing to non-voters who feel abandoned by the CDU but are still unsure of supporting the AfD.

“The potential of non-voters is much bigger potential than the minority that vote for the AfD.”