Merz vows to stay as German chancellor despite CDU's historic collapse in state elections

In the long arc of postwar German democracy, Sunday's state elections mark a sobering inflection point: the political center, long the anchor of European stability, is fraying at both edges. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose CDU fell below the parliamentary threshold in a former communist stronghold while the far-right AfD claimed more than a third of its votes, has chosen to remain in office—not from strength, but from the constitutional and moral logic that retreat may cost more than endurance. What is being tested is not merely one man's tenure, but whether the institutions of liberal democr