2020 CDU Leadership Contest

[palandio]

If you want to interpret this in Merz' favor, he was basically trying to say that all sexual orientations are ok and then went on to clarify the obvious limits.

If you want to interpret this in Merz' disfavor, his answer sounded a bit too much like "Gays are ok, as long as they don't molest children".

We're getting on woke terrain here and making unnecessary clarifications can expose you as un-woke.

[palandio]

Yes, of course people should be careful what they say and try not to be a**!$#?s.

But the fact that several people who I would consider decent persons didn't recognize how unsensible Merz' remark could sound, makes me think that this isn't about being a decent person or not. It's about being aware of how yesterday's platitudes ("as long as it is within the scope of the law and does not concern children") put into the wrong context can evoke highly unfortunate associations and therefore be insensitive. Wokeness in the positive sense includes being aware about that, wokeness in the negative sense includes automatically assuming bad intentions when people fail to follow the code.

[palandio]

Why is Merz so heavily favored by the betting markets? Ignorance, too much emphasis on polls of the public or...?

Depending on the betting market and its participants there can be a lot of wishful thinking involved. Merz is certainly not a Trumpist but rather some kind of Reaganite who is popular with people that are nostalgic of a more ideologically pure CDU like it was in the opposition years (1998-2005). It's quite likely that more ideologically oriented people are more engaged in the betting markets in the first place.

Is it due to the digital vote? (no "peer pressure" to vote for an establishment candidate). I'd imagine CDU delegates were extremely "vanilla" and establishmentarian. Merz got close last time, but now they're way ahead so "why rock the boat" and risk losing centrist voters by going right. Doesnt really make sense to me.

Merz is not anti-establishment in every sense of the word. It's just that many members and leading figures think that times have moved on. But he and the direction he represents remain popular with many in the CDU.

This party researcher seems to think Laschet is still favored, simply due to being the most experienced. How is his track record wrt predictions?

https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/interview-mit-volker-kronenberg-parteienforscher-empfiehlt-laschet-an-cdu-spitze-keine-losloesung-von-vorsitz-und-kandidatur/26781916.html?ticket=ST-2544320-A4KBduM3lHlTu262skuh-ap1

I don't know about the party researcher, but I will say why Merz might have a chance. I think that when AKK ran for the first time she had governed the Saarland for several years; but it's only the Saarland and apart from that she was mostly an unknown entity and seen as representing a continuation of Merkel's course. Laschet and Röttgen (and to mention all relevant persons Spahn and Söder) are all known entities.
Laschet is moderate, jovial and well-connected, but during the COVID-19 crisis he has become unpopular with the core of lockdown fanatics for seemingly being too laissez-faire.
Röttgen lost the 2012 election in NRW and was demoted from Minister of Environment by Merkel afterwards, which would play well in the story of a candidate like Merz but makes a more consense-oriented candidate like Röttgen look like a doormat.
In the end it is not said that the non-Merz vote will converge on a single candidate.

[palandio]

By "in the end" I mean the run-off, too. It is quite likely that a majority of the non-Merz vote will eventually converge, but a significant minority sitting out the run-off or even going to Merz could be decisive in a close election. Compared to AKK in 2018 I can see reasons why a more sizeable minority of the non-Merz vote would not go to Laschet, particularly his public image regarding the COVID-19 crisis.

[palandio]

[...]
And a centrist Laschet CDU has a lot of appeal. Just like the centrist Merkel CDU did. In Germany, elections are typically won by appealing to the center and not by rallying die-hard party zealots. The CDU is in an excellent position right now.

Elections are won in the center (never forget that this center is politically and socially quite diverse), but sometimes they can be lost at the margins or by losing voters to abstention.

One important question is of course what winning means. Occupying the pivotal spot in the center of the spectrum with 34% can be more attractive than winning 38% but with a coherent adversarial bloc winning a majority.