Jens Spahn
Photographer: Michele Tantussi / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Michele Tantussi / AFP / Getty Images
German Health Minister Jens Spahn has taken over from Chancellor Angela Merkel as the nation’s most popular politician, polled on Sunday, highlighting his potential as the future leader of Europe’s largest economy.
Spahn, 40, has long been considered a rising star in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and is widely believed to have made a key contribution to Germany’s relatively successful management of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Kantar poll in the Bild newspaper, 52% of respondents said that Spahn should play a major role in German politics in 2021, up from 28% at the end of 2019. Merkel’s approval rating was 51%. , increasing by 11 percentage points compared to the previous year.
“Spahn is clearly the winner of the year,” Bild was quoted as saying by Kantar’s Torsten Schneider-Haase. “From a human point of view, it reduces a positive figure in terms of coronavirus policy.”
Merkel is stepping down from the next elections in September 2021, after more than a decade and a half in power. The CDU will choose a new leader and likely candidate for a virtual congress next month.
Spahn supported Armin Laschet, the prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, while Friedrich Merz, a longtime rival of Merkel, and Norbert Roettgen, a former environment minister, are also running.
The winner will likely be the Conservative bloc’s candidate to succeed Merkel next year, although Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder, head of the CDU’s sister party in the southern state, may have been asked to intervene.
Soeder is the third most popular politician in 50%, according to the Kantar poll. Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the candidate for chancellor of the Social Democrats, was fourth with 47%, Merz obtained 37% in sixth place, Laschet 31% in eighth place and Roettgen 29% in ninth place.
While Spahn has thrown his support behind Laschet, there is an external chance that he could run for Conservative candidacy for chancellor if he is considered to have the best chance of winning the election.