Merkel closes in on victory
Small parties make gains, but German voters likely to stick with long-serving chancellor
BERLIN— Chancellor Angela Merkel appears all but certain to win a fourth term when Germans vote Sunday after a humdrum campaign produced few divisive issues but saw smaller parties gain support — including the nationalist, anti-migration Alternative for Germany, which is set to become the most right-wing party in parliament for 60 years.
Merkel, already chancellor for 12 years, has run a low-key campaign emphasizing the country’s sinking unemployment, strong economic growth, balanced budget and overall stability in a volatile world.
Pre-election polls give her conservative Union bloc a lead of 13 to 17 points over the centre-left Social Democrats of her challenger, Martin Schulz. The two are traditional rivals but have governed together in a “grand coalition” of the biggest parties for the past four years.
Schulz returned to German politics in January after years as the Europe- an Parliament’s president. He has struggled to gain traction with a campaign that centred on righting perceived economic injustices for Germany’s have-nots. It’s also been difficult for him to carve out clear differences with the conservatives.
Merkel offered Germans “a combination of the experience of recent years, in which we have achieved plenty, and curiosity for the new” during the pair’s only head-to-head debate of the campaign.
Merkel is pledging to get from Germany’s current 5.7-per-cent unemployment rate — down from 11 per cent when she took office in 2005 — to “full employment” by 2025. She pledges limited tax cuts and to keep Germany’s borrowing at zero.
And she offers a steady hand internationally, with long experience of European Union negotiating marathons, tough talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and now of engaging cautiously with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Hans Kundnani, an expert at the German Marshall Fund think tank, said it’s a “foregone conclusion” that Merkel will be the next chancellor.
The difficult part may be forming a new government. Merkel can hope for a narrow majority for a centreright coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats, with whom she ran Germany from 2009 to 2013, or the traditionally left-leaning Greens.
More likely is a result that leaves her either seeking an untried coalition with both those parties, or another “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats. The latter party has pledged to ballot its membership on any coalition deal, which could be tricky if it performs very badly.
Agovernment with the Free Democrats aboard might take a tougher stance on efforts to reform the eurozone and bail out strugglers, such as Greece.
The junior partners, whoever they are, will have “limited influence over the overall direction of policy,” Kundnani wrote in an analysis. He added that “in so far as differences exist between the four parties that could become part of the government, they are a matter of details and nuances.”
Polls show four parties competing for third place, with support between 7 and 12 per cent: the Free Democrats, the Greens, the Left Party and the nationalist Alternative for Germany, or AfD.