HAMBURG, Germany — She is a moderate centrist with a humble leadership style and wry sense of humor. She does not boast. But she has a track record of forging unlikely consensus — and winning elections.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the new leader of Germany’s most powerful political party and likely future chancellor, sounds a lot like the current one. That is her greatest strength and her greatest weakness as she prepares to take over from Chancellor Angela Merkel, a towering figure both loved and loathed inside her party and her country.

Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union announced its new leader on Friday after a closely watched vote by party delegates who chose from a list of three candidates: Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer and two men who had vowed to take the party to the right.

At a time when voters elsewhere in Europe and the world are clamoring for radical change and are turning to populist — and often male — leaders promising easy answers to complex global problems, Germany’s biggest party on Friday opted for the opposite: a woman succeeding another woman with a nuanced political program that above all represents continuity and stability.