German coalition talks normally drag on for months, as parties with increasingly divergent views try to hammer out ways of working together. By contrast, the new German government was forged in just over six weeks, presenting the results of quick but acrimonious negotiations on Wednesday.

But what looks like refreshing decisiveness appears to have put off many voters. For the first time ever, the anti-immigration AfD has topped a major poll. Incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz may retort that he “doesn’t take criticism from the far-Right seriously anymore”. But he’ll certainly have to take the political pressure on board. It doesn’t look like there will be much of a honeymoon period.

All major polling institutes have registered a sharp rise in AfD support in the last few weeks, ascribing as much as a quarter of the vote share to the party. Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU is now roughly neck-and-neck with the AfD while its centre-left coalition partner, the SPD, has stagnated at just 15%. The coalition which is about to become the next government has already lost its majority in terms of public support.

The SPD has remained stable since hitting rock bottom in the election. But Merz won in February on a lot of borrowed votes, which he is now haemorrhaging rapidly. Known as a longstanding and vocal intraparty adversary of former chancellor Angela Merkel, particularly regarding her asylum policy, Merz presented himself as a solid, old-fashioned conservative, which helped him claw back some votes following his party’s catastrophic result in 2021.

Even so, his party only managed 28.5% — way below its 35% target. Many centre-right voters just didn’t believe that Merz would be able to deliver the “political change” his manifesto promised, particularly on immigration, where he vowed that on his very first day in office he would enact a “de facto ban” on entering the country without a visa, even if the person were seeking asylum.

On the second big issue, the economy, Merz broke his election promise not to increase debt — almost immediately and in spectacular fashion — by agreeing to a borrowing package of nearly €1 trillion for security and infrastructure. The tentative trust small-c conservatives had lent him broke, with a recent survey indicating that only a third of Germans now think he is fit to be chancellor. He is also facing a rebellion from the grassroots and the youth wing of his own party, both of which are unhappy with the dynamics of the negotiations with the centre-left.

But Merz’s hands are tied. Because his party upholds a so-called firewall against the AfD, the only party he can work with is the deeply unpopular SPD, which has used the chance to punch above its weight in negotiations.

Ironically, what’s making the AfD grow is the very measure that is supposed to contain it. An increasing number of Right-wing voters, who constitute the majority according to the election results and all polls, feel they have no way of bringing about conservative politics by voting for the conservative party.

Merz’s new government now has just four years to deliver the substance of what he promised. But while the firewall to the Right stays in place, a centre-left drift is unavoidable. If Merz does anything to upset the SPD, the party can simply walk out, collapsing his government. He has made himself reliant on their goodwill.

Any potential tariffs are also likely to hit the export-oriented German economy disproportionately hard. So it won’t be any use hoping for a natural recovery. Instead, the huge debt-funded investments will have to be spent very wisely and without ideological blinkers.

It’s hard to think of a chancellor in German postwar history who started on a weaker footing. Merz will have to work very hard indeed to lift Germany’s malaise.

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Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.

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