The mood is upbeat at a pre-election meeting of Germany's young conservatives where a speaker's harsh attack on the Greens' climate policies sparks applause from the Generation Z activists.
The 40-odd members of the CDU party's youth wing go on to discuss what they see as the top issues ahead of Sunday's vote, from immigration and crime to the dire state of the economy.
Niels Kohlhaase, 25, believes only CDU leader Friedrich Merz, on course to decisively beat centre-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz, can revive the crisis-wracked economy.
A building company employee, Kohlhaase knows "how badly the construction sector" has suffered and is putting his faith in Merz, a millionaire former corporate lawyer and BlackRock executive.
While his parents supported Scholz's Social Democrats, the young man has chosen to join the CDU's youth wing, the Junge Union.
With his pleasant manner, he voiced disdain for the Greens, who have championed Germany's often bumpy green energy transition and support a diverse, multicultural society.
The Greens were the top party for 18-24 year olds in Germany's 2021 elections, at a time when the Fridays for Future movement drew many thousands onto the streets.
This time around, things may be very different if last year's European elections are any indication: the CDU/CSU alliance was the most popular among young German voters, followed by the far-right AfD.
Multiple surveys also point to a rightward shift among Germany's Gen Z, generally defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, many of whom will be casting ballots for the first time on Sunday.
East-west split
The young CDU supporters meeting in Rotenburg praised Merz's promise to reduce irregular immigration and wrest the issue back from the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
"We will only manage to halve support for the far-right AfD with a reasonable migration policy," said Josh Heitmann, 21, who comes from a family of farmers.
Many young German voters were seen in the past as more likely to support environmental protection and social justice causes.
But recent years have thrown up major new challenges, from the Ukraine war and a tanking economy to flaring geopolitical tensions as Donald Trump has returned to the White House.
Anxieties have deepened for some young people as they have been bombarded with unsettling video clips, real and fake, and often extreme political messaging via TikTok and other social media channels.
Researchers have sought to explain the drivers behind the shift in young people's concerns and beliefs.
Ruediger Maas, head of the Institute for Generation Research, argued they may worry less about the AfD because "Generation Z does not have the same relationship to World War II as their elders".
Maas also noted a key geographical split among conservative-leaning young people. While in western Germany, they tend to support the CDU/CSU, in the ex-communist east they are more likely to favour the AfD.
In three eastern regional elections last year, the AfD made strong gains among the 18-24 age group, especially at the expense of the Greens, polling institute infratest dimap found.
Maas pointed to broader factors which affect all age groups. While the former West Germany saw waves of immigrants, eastern Germany was long "relatively homogeneous, without many foreigners".
He said the reaction was therefore more pronounced in the east against Europe's large migrant influx of in 2015-2016 and the arrival of Ukrainian war refugees in the past three years.
TikTok battles
A major arena for the battle over young minds has been TikTok, where the AfD has been highly present and the far-left Die Linke has also successfully rallied support.
If the mainstream parties have been a little more flat-footed online, the CDU has tried to catch up and created a pre-election social media unit headed by its 32-year-old lawmaker Philipp Amthor.
"Of course we are concerned about the AfD's success among young people, the base of tomorrow's voters," Amthor told AFP.
The team is careful to avoid reacting to far-right disinformation and "trolls", he said, while hoping to help lighten the CDU's somewhat earnest image to appeal to the young.
Amthor filmed himself in an upper-body plaster cast in a light-hearted TikTok stunt to encourage voting by mail.
Kohlhaas said he was impressed, saying "it's the first time the CDU posts appeal to me".
Around 30 percent of German voters across all ages groups were still undecided this week, among them many youngsters who are seen less likely than their parents to have solid party loyalties.
Cleo Heitmann, 19, who accompanied her brother to the Junge Union evening, is still making up her mind and said she will decide "only in the voting booth".
BD-pratidin English/ Afia
