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 country’s most popular politician, a poll showed Sunday, which underscored his potential as the future leader of Europe’s largest economy.
Spahn, 40, has long been regarded as a rising star in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and is widely regarded as a major contributor to the relatively successful response to the coronavirus pandemic in Germany.
According to the Kantar poll in the Bild newspaper, 52% of respondents said that Spahn should play an important role in German politics by 2021, up from 28% at the end of 2019. Merkel’s approval score was 51%, an increase of 11 percentage points from compared to the last year.
“Spahn is clearly the winner of the year,” Bild Kantars quoted Torsten Schneider-Haase. “From the people’s point of view, he cuts a positive figure in the coronavirus policy.”
Merkel will step down after the next elections in September 2021, after more than a decade and a half in power. The CDU will elect a new leader and likely chancellor candidate at a virtual convention next month.
Spahn has backed Armin Laschet, the Prime Minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, while Friedrich Merz, an old rival of Merkel, and Norbert Roettgen, a former Environment Minister, are also active.
The winner is likely to be the Conservative bloc’s candidate to succeed Merkel next year, although Bavaria Prime Minister Markus Soeder, head of the CDU’s sister party in the southern state, may be asked to step in.
Soeder is the third most popular politician with 50%, the Kantar poll found. Finance Minister and Vice-Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of the Social Democrats, came fourth with 47%, Merz scored 37% in sixth place, Laschet 31% in eighth and Roettgen 29% in ninth.
Although Spahn has thrown his support behind Laschet, there is an outside chance that he could be addressed as the conservative candidate for chancellor if he has the best chance of winning the election.