Merz to make new bid Tuesday to secure German lawmaker backing

Arne Delfs, Michael Nienaber and Kamil Kowalcze, Bloomberg News on May 6, 2025

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Friedrich Merz will make another attempt to secure parliamentary backing as Germany’s next chancellor later on Tuesday after his humiliating shock loss in an initial vote.

The conservative leader earlier in the day fell short of a majority in a secret ballot in the Bundestag to confirm him as the head of a ruling coalition of his center-right CDU/CSU bloc and the center-left Social Democrats.

“It’s important that Germany gets a stable government,” Lars Klingbeil, the incoming SPD vice chancellor, told reporters in Berlin.

After talks with other parliamentary groups, it had been agreed to hold another vote for Merz starting at 3:15 p.m. local time and he was optimistic it would be successful, Klingbeil added.

It was the first time since World War II that an incoming chancellor failed to secure enough support from lawmakers in the first round of voting, preventing Merz taking over from outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz as planned and pitching Europe’s biggest economy into uncharted territory.

Merz only managed 310 votes, fewer than the required 316 out of 630 lawmakers, even though the coalition partners have 328 seats between them.

As it was a secret ballot, the identities of those who didn’t back Merz may never be known. Conspiracy theories were already swirling about who might have been responsible and what their motives were.