Germany’s national elections too close to call, polls show, as top candidates hold latest rallies
Predictions from Saturday’s poll indicate that the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) hold a small but narrow lead over Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.
The proximity of the race coupled with Germany’s complicated voting system means it could be some time before a winning coalition is formed and the ultimate winner is known.
The SPD and CDU, Germany’s two largest political parties, shared power under Merkel’s fourth term as chancellor.
CDU leader Armin Laschet, the party’s candidate to be the next Chancellor and Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, held a final election rally with Merkel in Aachen on Saturday.
A boy presented Merkel, 67, with an iced gingerbread heart with the words “Thank you CDU”, and another supporter gave her a cake decorated with an image of her diamond hand gesture.
Addressing the crowd, Merkel said Sunday’s election was aimed at keeping Germany “stable” and ensuring “that young people have a future and that we can live in prosperity.” She added that Laschet had shown throughout his political life that he could pursue it “with passion and heart”.
Rival candidate Olaf Scholz, from the Social Democrats, held his last rally on Saturday in his constituency of Potsdam. Scholz has been German Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Finance since 2018.
Scholz told his supporters that if elected he would agree to an increase in the minimum wage to 12 euros ($ 14) an hour in the first year of government. “I want to make sure that those who work so hard and earn little have a little better,” he said.
Scholz also referred to the concerns of many voters about climate change. Many young people demonstrated on Friday, he said, “and they put their finger on a wound that is real – because global climate change has to be stopped and we have to do our part here in Germany to make it happen. produce “.
FDP leader Christian Lindner was to end his electoral campaign with rallies in Cologne and Düsseldorf.
According to the latest polls, the Social Democrats vote 25.2% and could gain 4.7 percentage points from the 2017 national elections. This lead could mean a reversal of a 20-year downtrend for the social democrats. Over the past two decades, the party has lost around half of its voters.
The Christian Democrats are several percentage points behind the SPD at around 22.4%, according to polls. This could mean a loss of 10.5 percentage points from the 2017 national elections, and 19.1 percentage points from the 2013 elections.
The Greens are currently voting at 15.9%, in third place. However, the Green Party could record the strongest growth of any party in the next federal election, with a potential gain of 7.5 percentage points from the last national election in 2017. Greens leader Annalena Baerbock s’ is being imposed as a candidate for chancellor and potential kingmaker in the coalition talks set to follow Sunday’s vote.
According to poll forecasts, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) gets a poll rate of 11.1% and is expected to make only marginal gains from the last national election.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 10.6% of the polls, a drop of 2 percentage points from the 2017 national elections.
The AfD – which enjoyed marked success in the 2017 elections following the influx of refugees to Germany in 2015 – has struggled to maintain its momentum since then and has been severely criticized for its links to the extreme law.