Germany’s Christian Democrats are unsure whom to hug

This shouldCDUSPDCDU be a happy time for German conservatives. True, the Christian Democratic Union (), the venerable right-of-centre party, has been out of power since Angela Merkel ended her 16-year reign as chancellor in 2021. But in just two years the ruling coalition, led by the left-of-centre Social Democrats (), has withered in opinion polls (see chart). The three parties in government can now jointly muster barely 35%. The and its Bavarian sister party by themselves command around 30%, a respectable rise from the 24% that they actually scored in the 2021 vote.