Election call

Angela Merkel leaves the "sleeping car"

In Germany, less than a month before the Bundestag elections (September 27), the election campaign is gaining momentum. Based on the results of the upcoming vote, the name of the Federal Chancellor for the next four years will be known. The main contenders for this post are the leader of the Christian Democrats, the current Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Social Democratic Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier.

Until now, inter-party confrontation has been sluggish. Mr. Steinmeier's campaign promise to turn Germany into a country of full employment by 2020 was greeted with gentle irony by Merkel and her campaign staff. The fact is that in recent weeks the SPD's chances in the upcoming Bundestag elections have looked hopeless. One of the politicians even reproached Angela Merkel for allegedly planning to “enter the Federal Chancellor’s office in a sleeping car.”

But last weekend, the camp of the ruling CDU/CSU experienced an awakening with a soft, cold shower. In three federal states of Germany - Saarland (in the west of Germany), Thuringia and Saxony (both located in the east) - local parliamentary elections were held on Sunday. Experts saw them as a test of voter sentiment with an eye to the federal elections. And it can already be stated that the federal elections will not be as easy for Mrs. Merkel as it previously seemed.

The results of the land elections were generally not in favor of the CDU/CSU electoral bloc and its candidate Angela Merkel. Now only in Saxony do Christian Democrats have the right to form a state government, and even then only in a coalition with liberals. But it was Saxony, after the unification of Germany, that was known as the inviolable bastion of the CDU/CSU in the east. In Thuringia and Saarland, Angela Merkel's party lost its absolute majority. The process of forming a government there has already entered a period of coalition negotiations capable of giving rise to the most unexpected temporary party alliances.

To what extent can the current electoral zigzag at the state level be an indicator of the mood in the federal elections? Every week, the German public broadcaster ZDF reports its “political barometer” readings, based on data from reputable independent public opinion research services. The Barometer shows that if the Bundestag elections had been held last weekend, the CDU/CSU and the bloc's potential partner in the future coalition, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), would have received over 50% of the vote. At the same time, Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats party, together with its Bavarian partner CSU, could count on 37%, and the FDP liberals led by Guido Westerwelle could count on a stable 14% of the vote.

According to the same “political barometer,” other parties maintain similar stability in voters’ sympathies. The rating of the SPD and its chancellor candidate Frank Walter Steinmeier remains at 23%. 12 and 9% of Germans are ready to vote for the Green Party and the Left Party, respectively. But if German voters had to vote for a candidate in person, the gap would be even greater. According to the Politbarometer, 62% of Germans surveyed consider it advisable to leave Angela Merkel as chancellor, and only 22% want to see Frank Walter Steinmeier in it.

Yuri Shpakov, Berlin