Posted on 09/16/2005 7:51:13 AM PDT by GOPGuide
A centre-right coalition sought by German conservative leader Angela Merkel is running marginally ahead of the other main parties before Sunday's general election, according to two polls released on Friday.
A poll by Forsa for RTL television indicated support for Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), their sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and their liberal Free Democrat allies (FDP) at 48 to 51 percent.
Combined support for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats, the Greens and the new Left Party stood at 45 to 49 percent, the poll indicated.
Forsa said the SPD had slipped slightly since its poll last week, while the centre-right alliance had risen a touch.
A new poll from Allensbach for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, almost certainly the last to be published before Sunday's election, gave Merkel's coalition 49.5 percent of the vote, compared with 48 percent for the three other main parties.
Because fringe parties with less than five percent will fail to gain seats in parliament, a figure of around 49 percent is likely to be enough to secure a majority.
However, the poll for RTL, conducted this Monday to Friday, indicated that a quarter of voters had not decided whether they would vote on Sunday or which party they would back. The uncertainty was greater due to the presence of the Left Party.
"Even if many of the undecided end up not voting, this share of 'don't knows' suggests voters are still wavering right up to the election," Forsa head Manfred Guellner said in a statement.
The Forsa poll gave only ranges of support rather than precise numbers -- the CDU/CSU on 41-43 percent, the SPD on 32-34 percent, the Greens on 6-7 percent, the FDP at 7-8 percent and the new Left Party on 7-8 percent.
The Allensbach poll, conducted from Saturday to Thursday, placed the CDU/CSU at 41.5 percent, the SPD on 32.5 percent, the Greens on 7.0 percent, the FDP at 8.0 percent and the Left Party on 8.5 percent.
Exit polls will be published immediately after voting closes at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Sunday.
I'm sticking to my 1.5% victory for the combined CDU/CSU/FDP parties over the SPD/Linke/Grune. :)
Bump!
It's looking very good!
Very good indeed!
this poll By the way, was taken from Sept 10-15.
See more at Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000100&sid=aoX9_gGsq_Ok&refer=germany
bttt
Isn't this the lady they describe as the German Margaret Thatcher?...........
I hope and pray you're right.
Yes, it is. And the description is totally wrong!
I'm loving it!
fingers crossed, fingers crossed.
How is the description wrong? I liked Thatcher, obviously.
It is disgusting here in Germany. Schroeder has been doing interviews with the turkish newspapers to try and get the 600,000 turks living in Germany to vote for him.
I am an American and have lived here for about 2 years. I can't wait until February when I return to the USA. The people here are the whinniest(spelling, never really tried to spell that word before) I have ever seen. Not all of them but in general. They complain about everything from the whipped cream in their milche kaffee to GWB. I have had it with them.
The ones I know that have jobs and work instead of living off the dole want Merkel to win. Just because they realise that you can not just give money out and keep giving it out. Someone has to pay for it now or later but eventually.
Don't even get me started on what they think of the USA and it has a lot to do with reporting. I had to straighten out some youngsters one time when they started in on me about GWB and his war mongering. Ifin they were 18 years old I would have beat there asses. But they weren't and I can only hope I gave them something to think on for their future.
Sorry for the rant.
Germany is in a huge economic slup. It's image in Europe is tarnished. The US/German relations are at an all time low. But yet the party (SPD/Greens) which lead Germany down this path for the last seven years is getting enough support from the "Volk" that a victory for Merkel will only be marginal.
What does this really say about the German people?
Red6
Buh bye, Gerhard. Now if Helen Clark can lose in NZ tomorrow too, it'll be a leftist double whammy.
She wants to raise VAT taxes, but restore ties with the US. A mixed bag, I guess.
Schroeder also used the Turks in his anti-war game in 2002. He promised them EU membership support in return for a "No" to US money to use their soil for a Northern Front.
Most Germans will deny it, especially those who are self proclaimed conservatives, yet Schroeder in 2002 as well as today is making political capital on an anti-American agenda. Worse yet, the German people are responding well to it. As asked in my earlier post, what does this say about them?
In the past Germany was always an ally, yet never carried its own weight. Today they want to be an ally and even sit in the same boat with us in near all issues, but think they have the right to backstab us because they are a sovereign nation. That is significantly different from 1985.
Red6
In Hamburg there is a very conservative local political party that always take a few districts in the "First Vote" and gets 2 or 3 members of parliament. But "Second Votes" for this party would be wasted conservative votes.
I think it is good news that the 49:48 polling does not add up to 100%, meaning that nonsense parties like the NPD (Neonazis) and the true communist parties are cluttering up the remaining 3% of the polling but will NOT count at all on Sunday's final results because of the 5% rule that each party has to have to win any seats at all (unless one of their people gets directly elected somewhere).
So 49:48, really means 51.5:49.5 in favor of the conservatives. Mathematically, you MUST make this calculation. The problem is: that is too close with 25% of the population undecided.
What if they are only undecided between the Greens and the Linkspartei? That is a big thing to fear. The undecideds could easily be mostly lefties wondering whether to be loyal or radical.
But something good to fear is in play as well. If the undecideds are all wondering if they will vote for the Greens or the Linkspartei (commies), then the CDU wins the direct vote in almost every district of the country (the left having split itself into 3 groups). The SPD can only win a lot of direct elections in individual districts (first votes) if undecideds in that district decide to be loyal to the SPD in order to keep the CDU from winning by default the way Clinton beat Bush in 1992 because of Perot.
I think the preliminary results (Hochrechnungen) start coming in around 8PM German time on Sunday.
I found this web site a few months ago....probably here on FR. I'm not saying I believe in it. I just find it interesting. See what you think.
http://www.revelation13.net/KingJames2d.html
Pretty good, and likely - I agree. :-)
On German blogs, I am telling Schroeder supporters that Amerika thanks Schroeder for providing the airbases and logistical center for the Iraq War as well as the coming war with Syria and Iran.
I am telling them that, for this reason, Schroeder actually has NOT stood up against Bush except for hurting our feelings in a few election speeches and taking away a UN Mandate that the USA would have gotten for the war otherwise. The idea is to get SPD voters to understand that the Communists are right: Schroeder has not really stood up to Bush. If you are going to be anti-Bush and anti-war you have to vote communist in Germany this time. You have to be intellectually consistent. :-)
Where on the net can I watch live coverage on Sunday? When do the polls close, 8 or 9PM?
Things are looking good going for the center-right into the election.
A slight advance by Schroeder (by U.S. standards) has been parried by Merkel. As of three week ago, Merkel's coalition had 49 to 51 percent of the vote, with Schroeder's 38 to 41, and the Left Party at 8 or so. Merkel's coalition dipped to 48, and is now back to 49 or 50, which should be good enough to gain an outright majority of seats in the Bundestag.
Strengthening this view is Merkel's personal ratings. She started out behind Schroeder, and is now signficantly ahead. This means that she has essentially "closed the deal" with voters, who support her not merely as an alternative to Schroeder but as the alternative to him.
Looking to the financial markets in Germany, on the last trading day prior to the election, both the Euro and German equities strengthened, meaning that the markets have renewed confidence in a center-right majority.
Looking to the London betting markets, Merkel is a heavy favorite for Chancellor, and her coalition a slight favorite for a majority in the Bundestag.
The long-run implications of a center-right government in Germany will include weening eastern Germans (and others) off of welfare, so that they or at least the next generation of them will achieve economic independence and self-reliance and adopt a middle-class political orientation. Hopefully, this will reverse the recent drift of Germany into welfare-socialism, and restore Germany's commitment to the their continuing expirament with liberal, cooperative and democratic capitalism, what Erhard called the social market.
Undecideds usually break at the end against the incumbent party, so the CDU and FDP are most likely to gain, but Linke might gain some disaffacted SPD/Green voters.
"And the description is totally wrong!"
I think it's a bit too soon to tell how much reform Merkel might pass. The CDU has been fairly vague about how far their reform program will go.
You have to subtract one because the leftists just retook Norway from the center-rightists.
Then again...so did Kerry.
Bag?......pun intended?.......
>Schroeder has been doing interviews with the turkish newspapers to try and get the 600,000 turks living in Germany to vote for him.<
Turks do not have the vote here (unless they're naturalized Germans - very few are - which makes them by definition no longer Turks!). Only German citizens have the vote. I don't for instance, although I've lived here a long time.
Hillary as U.S. president?
Sorry but it won't happen. Condi maybe but Hillary no.
Remember polls always lean left.
Wack job is going down.
"Remember polls always lean left."
That's because liberals are usually shoving them that way by the questions.
When is the last time ANYONE has actually been called to participate on one of the polls shown on TV. USA/TODAY? Never has called me. Who are these people sampling? Manhattan?
I've lived in Germany for 12 years now...and even married to a German...and yes, they are king of the whiners. Anything that disturbs that routine...becomes a crisis or issue. If I rearranged the pillows on the couch...my wife would immedately see this and go into a routine fit. I know Germans who have a set sleep pattern for over 20 years...and simply won't change anything about that.
But this routine goes beyond anything you could dream up. A guy fully expects his company to keep him hired for years and years...never to change his position or move him to another office or get a new computer system. They are the least able to adapt to new software of any group I've ever seen. Even changing a TV show around to another night will get hugh amounts of whinning because they have a set TV plan. The 8pm tv news on the state-run tv channel is another example of that...people won't dare turn to anything else...and believe absolutely every word that they say.
I know an American guy...military...married to a German...and he just suffered a stroke. His wife...sat there in front of me as the doc said that he had to get rehab, and this was going to be taken care of back in the states at a Vet Center...at least 12 months...and she calmly said that she simply wasn't going back and asked if they would just pay for his treatment at a nearby German hospital...and the Doc just looked at her and said thats not the way they do this kind of thing. She has no intention of going back there for that year or even moving back there. I just stood and kept quiet. I have a German wife...and I full well know that my dimwit German would do the same thing. You can't depend on these women...they have a set plan and agenda...and they will simply stick to it. Its the routine...and all else be danged.
Don't know when the polls close. I left Germany in July. Thank God, their bash Bush, blame Bush, blame America for everything wrong in their life was getting old. Everything from high oil prices, global warming, to the rise in Islamic terror is blamed on Bush and the US in MOST of their minds. Even those who are conservative are so out of nationalistic, economic reasons- yet STILL blame the US for all their failures.
A long time ago I was criticized for calling Americans and America as Germany's new "Jew". Many here thought that was a little harsh and inaccurate. But was it?
Red6
I was called by Zogby once. I gave him a ton of false info on my demographics and voting history :-)
Nothing like screwing up their polls. The less faith people have in polls the better, because then politicians will have to say what they really think and not what the polls tell them to think.
"She wants to raise VAT taxes, but restore ties with the US. A mixed bag, I guess."
Well, to be exact, the CDU wants to raise the VAT by 2% in 2006 yet slash income taxes by 3% in 2007, which kinda makes sense economically.
Only time will tell wether Merkel will become a German Maggie Thatcher. After all, Thatcher was considered a moderate during her election campaign. I think Merkel knows what she wants and she is much, much more market-oriented than Helmut Kohl for example. The question is wether she will be able to tame her rivals within the party, namely the governors of larger German states such as Bavaria or Hesse.
I don't know. I date women in Germany between the ages of 18 and 25 when I am there on business. If a German woman of that age range starts to bash Bush but then realizes that I approve of Bush...she more often that not quickly apologizes and drops the subject saying something like "of course, I only have the local media to go on. I haven't been able to get the American side of the story."
Sadly, I find too many of these young German women too nihilistic to have relationships with. They are often lackadaisical about life in comparison with British or Russian or Polish women.
In the USA, young women are less likely to be so accomodating with the men they date. In the USA, a woman often goes into a date with a fixed politico-religious viewpoint. I prefer a mix of the two: more conviction like Americans but less feminist stubborness (inability to take a man's experience and views into account) like Americans.
I did go on a date with a 35 year old German woman in June however. She was not accomodating (tactful) like the younger women but I good-naturedly fed her a nice Bavarian meal at a Hannover restaurant while I listened to her say things like "Ich find's sehr geil wann die Ami Soldaten toeten einander in Irak!"
I guess I have too much class. If she was a man, I would have decked her for remarks like that. Instead, I finished the meal talking about her hobbies and asking her about why she was still without a man (very, very subtle response to the above remark she had made).
By the way, the translation of the above comment: "I find it so sexy when American soldiers kill each other in Iraq."
You cannot get mad at someone like that (if she is female). You can only recognize that this is why someone lives with a bunch of cats and will do so the rest of her life (she said she hates German men and is an atheist who doesn't believe in marriage, which is an unwritten party rule for much of the German left).
Maybe a young John Kerry wannabe will marry her.
"Schroeder also used the Turks in his anti-war game in 2002. He promised them EU membership support in return for a "No" to US money to use their soil for a Northern Front.
Most Germans will deny it, especially those who are self proclaimed conservatives, yet Schroeder in 2002 as well as today is making political capital on an anti-American agenda. Worse yet, the German people are responding well to it. As asked in my earlier post, what does this say about them?"
Schroeders game was far more duplicitous than that actually. He also deny a Turkish request for reconaissance planes to be used in Turkish airspace only. As for the anti-american agenda: That worked fine in 2002, especially in Eastern Germany, where Schroeder was able to capitalize on 40 years of communist indoctrination.
But I would definitely say that anti-americanism has peaked already with Mr. Muenteferings "locust"-campaign. After that the tone of political debate has very much shifted.
The important questions today are: How drastic do the reforms Germany needs have to be? And what will become of Germany "third-way" welfare state model? The question of Germanys relationship with the US has be relegated to a secondary status.
Schroeder was not able to make a slight comeback in the polls because of anti-american slander, but rather because he was able to play with the Germans' fear of the future.
[If I rearranged the pillows on the couch...my wife would immedately see this and go into a routine fit.]
I had a three year relationship in Unterschleisheim where everything in the apartment, especially the bed/couch had to be in perfect order. It was a more disciplined regime than the 2 years I spent on an American Army base in Augsburg (20 miles away). I liked it though. It made me feel alive the way basic training made me feel alive. :-)
But that woman would have followed me to the ends of the Earth. I dumped her by leaving for a job promotion in Seattle without taking her. A better man got her. At least better for her. And he is rich as the dickens.
She is still a wonderful friend and I still go to the birthday party every February of the child I helped her to raise back then. I rearrange business trips around that event, even when I lived and worked in California. She gets to show off the renovations always being done to her mansion (rubbing it in that she did well for herself).
By the way, I didn't take her to Seattle nor marry her partly because she was very much a leftist. But leftists in Germany can be so friendly and warm with the Americans who disagree with them. They are rarely as vile, confrontational and hateful as American leftists can be.
So I almost could have married her.
This is not a vile, hateful election process in Germany now, the way our election was last year. Tonight, half the Germans are upset about the picture of dead American soldiers...it has become a major issue in the final two days and even the left wing media cannot help but spin the issue as more one about the tact involved rather than about one's view of the Iraq War...but it is not as if there are pictures of dead soldiers from their own country, which would have been really vile in their context...and which would have happened in one of our elections (and will happen).
Even then, I know a lot of California leftists whom I can count on as great friends. So many leftists are just warm, cuddly, naive people who simply don't understand that their lives are bought and paid for by the blood of US soldiers.
During her rise since reunification, Merkel, 51, has helped dispatch a series of political rivals, including the two men who most supported her: former chancellor Helmut Kohl and the only freely elected Prime Minister of East Germany, Lothar de Maiziere.
So does this means she's kind of a back-stabber?
"So does this means she's kind of a back-stabber?"
Not really. Merkel, herself a minister under Helmut Kohl, distanced herself and the party from the former chancellor, when when it became clear that he was involved in a party financing scandal (that was 1999 or 2000, if I remember correctly).
Merkel wrote a piece in the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), in which she stated: The era Kohl is definitely over and the party needs to move forward.
Many of Kohl's bootlickers considered this illoyal, but in the end it safed the CDU from further infighting and brought Merkel the position of chairwoman of the CDU.
Merkel never plotted against DeMaiziere, though, because DeMaiziere never really played an important role in German politics after reunification. There simply was no time to backstab DeMaiziere during his short stint as prime minister.
Thanks for the informative reply.
So what kind of woman do you think she is personally? What do you think she's made of?
Looks like your boy Schroeder is headed for Dan Rather land, boy.
"So what kind of woman do you think she is personally? What do you think she's made of?"
A trained physicist with a doctorate in quantum chemistry, she has an etremely analytical thinking. From what I sense she pretty much knows what she wants to do. In various contexts she quoted Thatcher and Reagan as role models, but she is painfully aware that Germany isn't the UK or the US, and there are serious obstacles in her way (trade unions, interest groups etc.). Grown up under communist rule and having witnessed the decline of the GDR, Merkel firmly believes in the superiority of free markets. However, there is still a large bloc within the CDU that prefers the old German welfare state.
One thing she is lacking a bit is what we Germans call "Hausmacht", that is a regional supporter base. Just like in the US, where a governor of Texas or California (or Arkansas for that matter *lol) has better chances of becoming president than a senator from Vermont, Merkels main problem are her party rivals, mostly the prime ministers (~governors) of the states of Hesse and Bavaria, Koch and Stoiber.
On the other hand Merkel is an extremely skilled tactician. Her rise to the top position within the CDU only took 10 years, and she has certainly learned how to outmaneuver rivals.
Many describe her as somewhat bland, yet sincere. She is certainly lacking the popular appeal of a Gerhard Schroeder (after all, Schroeder is actually quite similar to G.W. Bush in his political style, he too tops the "Which politician would you rather invite for a barbecue?"-polls).
Personally I find her absolutely charming, but that has something to do with my personal background as a protestant with North-German ancestory, who grew up in an academic family with between highly and exceptionally gifted siblings. So my personal opinion is probably not a good indicator of a politician's popularity.
Interesting.
What about her level of trustworthiness and integrity?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.