Undecided Germans hold key to what may be knife's-edge poll result

afp via yahoo ^ | Thursday September 15 2005 | staff

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Three days before Germany goes to the polls, the ruling parties clung to the hope that they can woo enough undecided voters -- reportedly one-third of the electorate -- to rescue Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's center-left coalition.

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Greens, junior partner in the governing alliance, said his party still had a fighting chance Sunday of matching its record 8.6 percent result in the 2002 election.

"We can reach that goal if we throw ourselves into the campaign and do not get sidetracked by any kind of speculation" about other possible coalition partners, Fischer told German news agency DPA on Thursday.

"The fact that many people have not yet made up their minds is key."

The Greens currently have about seven percent backing.

The party's strong showing in the last election salvaged the coalition with Schroeder's Social Democrats, which are now trailing Angela Merkel's conservative opposition Christian Democrats by about nine points according to most polls.

Although that gap looks tough to close in what are now the final hours of the campaign, even slight shifts in support will have an impact on which coalition finally takes power, with only a whisker separating the main alliances.

Merkel's Christian Democrats are currently polling at about 42 percent, meaning they have little chance of an absolute majority and would have to govern with another party.

Their chosen partner, the liberal Free Democrats, is tallying about six percent support, meaning the grouping would come up just short of the number of seats needed to form a government.

That fact has opened up a political free-for-all ahead of election day as a poll released Wednesday by the independent Allensbach institute for the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung indicated that more than 30 percent of voters were still undecided.

Schroeder and Merkel are zigzagging across the country, holding two rallies per day to win over the last voters who could tip the scales in their favor.

The chancellor received a boost from a separate poll Thursday showing that more than half of German voters did not believe the time had come for a political change.

The survey by the independent Forsa institute, conducted this week among 1,003 Germans, showed that 51 percent were not ready for new leaders, up one point since two weeks ago, while 45 percent said Germany needed a change and wanted to see the Christian Democrats take power.

Thirty-five percent said they would like to see Merkel form her favored coalition with the liberals while 23 percent preferred a grand coalition stretching across the political spectrum to include the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats.

Just 19 percent said they wanted the current coalition of Social Democrats and Greens to stay in power -- perhaps an indication that a majority would like to see the popular Schroeder stay at the chancellery but with another coalition.

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Merkel, billed as the next Margaret Thatcher, is what Germany needs. But whereas Merkel will have to form a coalition if she wins at all, Thatcher won by a convincing majority.

[KC_Conspirator]

Interesting. I bet another Freeper that Shroeder would revert back to anti-America campaigning in order to win the election. However, I can't remember the Freeper's name.

[jerod]

"the popular Schroeder" ???

We'll see in a couple of days... my guess is that he's toast. He's too anti-American and too liberal.

The press in Germany and the rest of Europe are as liberal as it gets. And like the press in Canada, they portray a picture of perfect liberal favorability. Everybody hates America, everybody loves secularism, everybody is against the Iraq war and everybody supports every liberal cause. And of course, they produce polls that indicate the same thing... But nothing could be farther from the truth.

In England they re-elected Tony Blair who was pro Iraq war and pro American, and in Germany they're going to get rid of Schroeder, who is anti-American and anti Iraq war. In Canada, the Liberals barely hung on in the last election and it's just a matter of time before black-jack Chirac is trounced in France.

Just because the liberal media huffs and puffs away with their lies, it doesn’t make them true. The world is much more conservative and pro-American than the press would care to admit.

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> I bet another Freeper that Shroeder would revert back to anti-America campaigning in order to win the election. However, I can't remember the Freeper's name.

It wasn't me :) I read yesterday he's appealing to the Turkish immigrant population.

[KC_Conspirator]

I just found him.