Germany: Merkel's party to choose new leader by late January

BERLIN (AP) — Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right party is turning to a ballot of its entire membership to choose a new leader after crashing to defeat and its worst-ever national election result in September. It expects to have a new leader by late January.

It will be the first time that the Christian Democratic Union has had its roughly 400,000-strong membership vote on who leads the party. Outgoing leader Armin Laschet said Tuesday that it is “a good way to achieve a new beginning for the CDU.”

Laschet, who was elected to lead the CDU only in January, is stepping aside after a much-criticized election campaign marred by infighting.

The two-party Union bloc, in which the CDU is by far the bigger party, finished behind the center-left Social Democrats with only 24.1% of the vote. The Social Democrats are negotiating with two smaller parties to form a coalition government, which they hope will take office in early December — sending the Union into opposition.

The CDU leadership contest will be the third since Merkel stepped down as party chairwoman in late 2018 and announced she wouldn't seek a fifth term as chancellor.

Both Laschet and predecessor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer were narrowly elected by party congresses after three-way battles for the leadership. This time, local party bosses made it clear that they want the wider membership to have a say.

Candidates can be nominated from Nov. 6-17 and a first round of voting, by online and mail-in ballot, will be held in early December. If a runoff ballot is required, that would be completed in mid-January. A party congress Jan. 21-22 will officially sign off on the result.

No one has yet declared their candidacy to succeed the centrist Laschet.

But conservative Friedrich Merz, who finished second in...