German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives widened their lead over their Social Democrat Party (SPD) rivals in a poll six months before what should be a very tight German election, the chief executive of the polling institute Forsa, Manfred Guellner, told Reuters on Tuesday (March 21).
However, the Forsa poll showed 59 percent of those asked also wanted change in the top leadership, possibly pointing to an appetite for a different coalition. Merkel, in power for 11 years, has lead the country in a grand coalition with the SPD since 2013.
Merkel wants to win a fourth term in the Sept. 24 election but faces an unexpectedly strong challenge from the SPD’s new leader Martin Schulz, who has boosted his party’s support by around 10 points since he was chosen nearly two months ago.
The poll, conducted just before a weekend party meeting that formally endorsed Schultz as leader with 100 percent of the votes, showed his positive impact waning slightly and put the SPD down one point at 31 percent. Manfred Guellner, chief executive of Forsa said people didn’t pay attention to party political conventions as much now and that he thought the Schulz vote shouldn’t change opinion.
Merkel’s conservative bloc—her Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU)—was up 1 percentage point at 34 percent from the last poll a week ago.
It also showed that in a theoretical direct vote for chancellor, Merkel would win 41 percent of the vote, up two points from last week, and Schulz would get 33 percent, down three points.
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) was unchanged at 9 percent.
Schulz, trying to put social justice at the center of the election campaign, wants to form a leftist coalition with the Greens and possibly the radical Left party. The Forsa poll said only 19 percent of Germans backed that option.
The poll put the Greens and Left at 7 percent each.
(Reuters)
