Merkel falls behind in latest polls
BERLIN • Germany’s Green Party has overtaken Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and is leading the polls ahead of September’s elections.
A dramatic surge in support means the Greens could stage an upset and seize the chancellery from the CDU after Merkel’s 15 years in power.
German newspapers even asked this week whether Annalena Baerbock, the Greens’ candidate for chancellor, could be “the new Mrs. Merkel.”
Three opinion polls in the past week have given the Greens a clear lead, with 25 to 28 per cent of the vote, ahead of the CDU on 22 to 24 per cent, while a fourth has the two parties tied on 23 per cent. While not enough for an outright majority, that level of support would make the Greens the largest party in parliament and give them a mandate to form a coalition government.
The rise in Green support is partly due to voter discontent with Merkel’s handling of the coronavirus and her party’s choice of Armin Laschet as its candidate to succeed her.
However, the Greens have also enjoyed a sizable bounce from the nomination of Baerbock as their candidate for chancellor.
She is polling even better than her party. Asked who they would vote for if there was a direct election for chancellor, 32 per cent of Germans opted for Baerbock, with 15 per cent backing Laschet and 13 per cent for Olaf Scholz of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).
Even more strikingly, Baerbock is also favoured by the German business elite, which is traditionally wary of the Greens.
Baerbock, 40, only became an MP seven years ago, has no government experience and has never had a job outside politics.
She was a competitive trampolinist as a teenager but a foot injury forced her to give up hopes of an athletic career. After a year as a postgraduate at the London School of Economics, she went straight into politics, working for a time with a Green member of European Parliament in Brussels.
Unable to break into the established Green hierarchy in her hometown of Hanover, she moved to the former communist east, where the party has traditionally struggled. She impressed with her ability to connect with eastern voters and became an MP at 33, and joint party leader at 37. For a long time she seemed in the shadow of Robert Habeck, her more experienced fellow leader.
Long dismissed as the boring one, according to her inner circle, Baerbock dislikes being characterized as a policy wonk. However, she has played that to her advantage, telling one interviewer: “Chickens, pigs and milking cows, that’s Robert’s field. Mine is international law.” Once she was named joint party leader there were comments that she was only there to fill the party’s gender quota and Habeck said her gender played a part in her beating him to the candidacy for chancellor.