A survey carried out by YouGov and published on Friday shows that 43% of Germans want Angela Merkel to leave office.
The survey also revealed that 42% of respondents wanted the veteran chancellor to stay on as head of government, while 15% did not give a response either way, thelocal.de reported.
Somewhat surprisingly, Merkel is most popular among voters of the environmentalist Green party, two thirds of whom said she should stay in office.
She is slightly less loved by voters of the conservative Union, which includes her own Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU).
Some 63% of Union voters said they wanted her to stay on as chancellor, while 27% want her to go. Merkel is currently entangled in a power battle with the CSU over border controls, which is threatening to collapse her coalition barely three months after it was established.
Merkel also remains strangely popular among voters of the far-left Die Linke party, 48% of whom want her to stay in office. She is least popular by far among voters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), only 6% of whom want her to stay on.
The survey also showed that most Germans do not believe that the coalition will collapse over the current dispute between Merkel and the CSU. Only 32% of respondents said the coalition is about to fall to pieces, while 45% said it would survive to fight another day.
Nonetheless half the respondents said they did not believe that the coalition would make it to the next scheduled national elections in 2021.
Whereas Merkel once enjoyed unrivalled support among German voters, recent polls have shown dwindling patience with her policies. A YouGov poll from the end of last year showed that 47% of voters wanted her to stand on before the next national election.
