May 6, 2025, 6:46 a.m. ET An election campaign poster for Friedrich Merz in western Germany this year. Credit…Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Before he returned to politics, won a national election and became the first would-be chancellor in modern German history to fail to win the job on the first ballot in Parliament,…
May 6, 2025, 6:46 a.m. ET An election campaign poster for Friedrich Merz in western Germany this year. Credit…Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Before he returned to politics, won a national election and became the first would-be chancellor in modern German history to fail to win the job on the first ballot in Parliament,…
Two decades ago, before Friedrich Merz came back from the private sector to win the German chancellorship, he accepted an invitation to a gathering of the French Foreign Legion in Corsica. At the last moment, the organizers asked him to arrive on the parade ground not by road or rail, but by parachute. Mr. Merz,…
Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats and its leader-in-waiting for the last 10 weeks, failed in his first parliamentary vote to become chancellor on Tuesday morning. The setback was likely temporary: Mr. Merz’s party, its sister party, the Christian Social Union, and their coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats, still have enough votes…
Two decades ago, before Friedrich Merz came back from the private sector to win the German chancellorship, he accepted an invitation to a gathering of the French Foreign Legion in Corsica. At the last moment, the organizers asked him to arrive on the parade ground not by road or rail, but by parachute. Mr. Merz,…
Exactly six months after Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition imploded, Friedrich Merz, a conservative Christian Democrat, will be sworn in as Germany’s next chancellor on Tuesday. The swearing-in comes after less than two months of negotiation between the Christian Democratic Union, or C.D.U., which came in first with 28.5 percent of the vote, and the incumbent…
The Trump factor is shaping global politics, one election at a time — just not necessarily to the president’s taste. In major votes in Canada and Australia over the past two weeks, centrists saw their fortunes revived, while parties that had borrowed from the MAGA playbook lost out. President Trump has been back in power…
George Simion, a right-wing nationalist who has promised to “Make Romania Great Again,” won the first round of his country’s presidential election on Sunday, bucking the recent trend of voters punishing candidates seen as friendly to President Trump. With more than 98 percent of the votes cast inside Romania counted, Mr. Simion was far ahead…
Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, never styled himself as an anti-Trump figure in his pitch for re-election. He said he trusted President Trump, and that he respected America’s democratic process. He rarely invoked Mr. Trump by name, redirecting questions about him to discussions of budget surpluses or a comment that he was focused on Australia….
A dramatic victory in a parliamentary special election. Hundreds of seats won in English municipalities. A first taste of power in the lower tiers of government. By making extensive gains in a set of local elections held in England on Thursday, Nigel Farage, one of Britain’s best known supporters of President Trump and the leader…