Germany’s closely fought election today is to set the direction of the EU’s most populous country after 16 years under German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose party is scrambling to avoid defeat by its center-left rivals after a roller-coaster campaign. The environmentalist Greens are also eyeing at least a share of power.
About 60.4 million people in the nation of 83 million are eligible to elect the new parliament, which decides who will be the next head of government. Recent polls point to a neck-and-neck race between Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democrats, with the latter marginally ahead.
The polls show the Greens, making their first bid for the chancellorship, in third place after a campaign in which all three have held the lead.
The Social Democrats’ candidate, German Minister of Finance and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, has seen his personal ratings climb amid error-strewn campaigns by his rivals, the CDU’s Armin Laschet and the Greens’ Annalena Baerbock.
Merkel, who remains personally popular after steering Germany through a string of crises, announced in 2018 that she would not go for a fifth term. That set up the first election since West Germany’s initial vote in 1949 in which there is no incumbent chancellor seeking re-election.
Voters appear underwhelmed by the choices. Whoever finishes first is expected to get a historically low share of the vote, with polls showing no party expected to get 30 percent support. The lowest score so far for a winning party is the CDU’s 31 percent in 1949, which also is the bloc’s worst showing to date.
Such an outcome would likely trigger lengthy haggling on a new governing coalition, with whichever party finishes first best-placed — but not guaranteed — to have its candidate succeed Merkel.
A first-place finish for the Social Democrats, who provided three of Germany’s eight post-World War II chancellors, but have been Merkel’s junior governing partners for 12 of the past 16 years, would be remarkable after a long poll slump for the party.
When the CDU and the Greens chose their candidates this spring, the election was widely expected to be a race between the two.
The CDU was prepared for a Laschet-Baerbock battle and “Laschet wanted practically to act as the incumbent, with all his leadership expertise” from his current job as governor of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, political science professor Andrea Roemmele of the Hertie School in Berlin said this week.
“But now the duel isn’t Laschet against Baerbock, it’s Laschet against Scholz, and in this combination Mr Laschet has been forced into the role of challenger,” she said.
“Scholz is deploying all the power of his vice chancellorship, of the finance minister, and is enjoying campaigning this way; he has simply managed to build up trust,” she added.
Scholz also has had the smoothest campaign, although opponents sought to capitalize on a recent police search at his ministry. Baerbock suffered from early gaffes, notably having to correct details in a resume and facing allegations of plagiarism in a new book.
Laschet was nominated after a divisive internal battle with a rival, then suffered from perceptions that he poorly handled deadly floods that hit his state in July.
A scene in which he was seen laughing in the background as Germany’s president delivered solemn remarks about the disaster did not help his campaign image.
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