Electoral record
Friedrich Merz
CDU leader who won the 23 February 2025 federal election with 28.5% of the Union vote and became chancellor. During the campaign he was one of the targets of the Storm-1516 operation, which the German government later attributed to GRU-backed actors and which spread fabricated videos about him — including a false claim that he had been committed to a psychiatric institution.
This is not a biography collection. Entries cover a person's record on elections and voting rights only, and every entry carries a citation to a court ruling, an official finding, or an election-observation report. Nothing appears here without a source, and inclusion is not a judgement about a person.
Electoral record
Each entry is dated, categorised by what it did to the conduct of an election, and cited.
- 2025Subject of a findingCandidacy
Led the Union to first place in the 2025 Bundestag election (28.5% of second votes) and became chancellor. German authorities stated definitively in December 2025 that the GRU-backed Storm-1516 campaign had sought to influence and destabilize that election, including with fabricated content targeting Merz personally.
Germany blames Russia for cyberattack on air safety, election interference — Agence France-Presse via The Moscow Times
Linked cases
- 2023Storm-1516Influence Operations
- 2025Germany 2025 Federal Election
Primary sources
The evidence-library records this profile is built on — each with its type, issuer and preservation state.
Sources
- Bundestag election 2025 — final official results— Der Bundeswahlleiter