The Day Only 1 in 8 Germans Trusted Merz: His Government Is Finished

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Uh, only 13 Germans out of 100 now approve of the Merz government. Let that sink for 1 second. Out of every group of eight Germans you meet on a street, on a train, in a supermarket queue, only one will tell you they think the people running their country are doing a decent job. The Chancellor himself sits at just 16%.

[00:00:21]That is the lowest personal approval any post-war German Chancellor has ever recorded, and it happened in record time. Hello. This is Andrew Mitrich, and today we are inside the slow motion collapse of the Merz era. Before we go any further, hit the like button and subscribe. It matters more than you think. YouTube only pushes this kind of independent analysis to other Germans when the engagement signal is strong, and your one click is part of that signal. Let us walk through what is actually going on. Friedrich Merz won an election by promising tough reforms. He promised to fix the migration system, to control spending, to rebuild industry, to bring Germany back to seriousness.

[00:01:05]What he has delivered in his first months is a string of SPD compromises, endless coalition disputes, and an atmosphere of permanent fight. The previous traffic light coalition had already destroyed public trust. The new government, instead of rebuilding it, has so far produced only new taxes and arguments over pensions, over health care, and over migration. Germans were were were promised reform. They got a permanent committee meeting that never decides anything. And in the meantime, the AfD has continued climbing in poll after poll. In many national surveys, the AfD is now the strongest party in the entire country. Read that again. Not a protest party in the corner, the strongest party.

[00:01:49]And the political class in Berlin can feel it. You can tell by what they are now openly proposing. The premier of Schleswig-Holstein, Daniel Günther, a CDU man, went on ARD this week and floated something his own party considered unthinkable 2 years ago. He suggested that the CDU should officially allow coalitions with the Left Party, the far left, in order to block the AfD.

[00:02:12]That sentence carries more weight than the polite tone in which it was delivered. It is the firewall starting to crack from a new direction. The CDU was supposed to punish you so so radical so radical so so so so so so so so so so so so so so party of the right of center. To preserve it its own state premier is now talking about an alliance with people his voters spent decades opposing. And the numbers explain why he is panicking.

[00:02:40]In Saxony, the AfD is polling at 42%.

[00:02:45]The CDU is polling at 21%.

[00:02:49]The gap is double. So, Günther's argument is essentially this, we cannot beat them, so let us link arms with the people we used to fight against and hope the math saves us.

[00:03:00]Critics warned immediately that by allying with the far left to fight the so-called far right, the German conservatives risk becoming a left party themselves and abandoning their traditional voters. Which is exactly what the AfD wants. Every such announcement strengthens its claim to be the only real opposition in the country.

[00:03:19]It accelerates the realignment. It hands the AfD new oxygen for free. And in a single state Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony Saxony AfD regional leader has already started laying out what their education policy will look like if they take power this autumn.

[00:03:41]Classical curriculum back, anti-racism seminars out, LGBTQ programs out of schools. Education is a state matter in Germany, which means this is not a thought experiment for some distant year. It is a realistic autumn scenario.

[00:03:53]While the political class fights over its own survival, ordinary Germans are looking at numbers that explain why their patience is gone. A new calculation just landed showing what the German welfare state actually pays. A single mother in Baden-Württemberg with three children can receive around 4,700 euros a month in combined benefits.

[00:04:12]Families with two children pull in 2,800 to 3,100.

[00:04:17]A Berlin couple without children, mostly because of high rent, gets 2,600. A Mannheim family with multiple children tops 4,400.

[00:04:27]Germany now has more than 500 separate federal social benefits. The social code itself runs to 3,246 paragraphs, and the total social spending hit 1 trillion 345 billion euros in 2024.

[00:04:47]That is roughly 31% of the entire economy. Now, why does this number set off such anger in working Germans?

[00:04:55]Because a full-time worker on an average salary, after taxes, often ends the month with less in his pocket than the welfare household next door. A nurse on a night shift, a forklift driver in a logistics depot, a young accountant can sit down at the kitchen table, do the math, and quietly conclude that the system rewards leaving the labor market more than entering it. That feeling is the engine of the AfD vote. From July of next year, the Bürgergeld is supposed to be replaced by a stricter basic income.

[00:05:31]But Germans have heard reform promises before. They will believe it when the numbers on their own bank statement change. If you live in Germany, or your family does, please leave a comment with the city you are watching from. It helps the algorithm enormously, and it tells other German viewers they are not alone in noticing all this.

[00:05:48]And then, on top of approval at 13%, on top of welfare math that humiliates the working middle class, on top of a a firewall that is openly cracking, there is the long-term care system.

[00:06:03]Germany's long-term care insurance is collapsing. The first quarter of this year alone produced a deficit of 667 million euros, despite an 800 million euro state credit being pumped in. The full year deficit is now forecast to exceed 3 billion euros and to balloon to at least 7 billion by 2027. The number of cases needing care has surged from 3 million to 7 million people since 2017.

[00:06:27]Cases involving children and teenagers have quadrupled from 53,000 to 190,000.

[00:06:35]And nursing home costs jumped 9% in just 1 year, hitting nearly 3,000 euros a month out of pocket in the first year of care. 3,000 euros a month on top of insurance, on top of rent, on top of everything else.

[00:06:54]And finally, this. German employers are openly demanding the abolition of the 8-hour workday and a switch to a weekly 48-hour cap with no daily limit. Unions warned this would allow shifts of 10, 12, even 13 hours in logistics, in care, in retail, in delivery, in manufacturing. The reform is already written into the coalition agreement.

[00:07:19]CDU and CSU back the employers.

[00:07:27]SPD is trying weekly to defend the workers.

[00:07:31]Critics warn that women will absorb the extra household burden as their partners come home later and more exhausted. And long shifts trigger burnout, stress, and chronic illness across the entire workforce. So, the German government, sitting at 13% approval, is now preparing to ask its already exhausted population to work longer days. You can almost hear the AfD speechwriters typing.

[00:07:55]If you step back and look at the whole picture, the story is no longer about one politician or one law, it is about a country whose elite has lost the consent of its people and is now choosing, week by week, the policies most likely to deepen that loss. Approval is at 13%.

[00:08:10]The firewall is breaking from the inside. Welfare math is humiliating workers. The care system is bleeding billions. The workday is about to be stretched and the AfD is, in poll after poll, the strongest party in Germany.

[00:08:22]None of this is a forecast. All of it is already on the table. The only open question is how long it takes for the political map to catch up with the kitchen table. If this analysis gave you something, please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel. Likes and comments are the real signal YouTube uses to decide whether to recommend this video to other Germans who are quietly thinking exactly the same things. If you can support the channel through sponsorship or super thanks, you make this kind of independent work possible because honest research takes time, verification, and a refusal to take shortcuts that the mainstream takes every day. Your support keeps this channel free from the pressures that bend almost every other newsroom. Leave a comment below. Tell me what you see in your own city. Share this with one person who needs to hear it and thank you sincerely for being part of this community. We continue tomorrow.