(Bloomberg) -- Angela Merkel cautioned voters against engaging in “left-wing experiments” ahead of a state election that’s shaping up to be one of the biggest tests in her 13-year tenure as German chancellor.
At a rally in the western state of Hesse, Merkel on Monday portrayed her Christian Democratic Union as a guardian of stability in a time of ever increasing turbulence. Polls in the region, home to Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt, show both the CDU and the opposition Social Democrats losing ground among voters ahead of the Oct. 28 ballot.
“It will be close, but it can work,” Merkel told a crowd of several hundred supporters in a hotel auditorium in the northern Hessian city of Kassel.
Six weeks before Merkel seeks re-election as CDU leader at a party conference in Hamburg, and as her national coalition with the Social Democrats and the Bavarian Christian Social Union is weighed down by political infighting, the vote in Hesse may determine how much support the German leader has among her own ranks. This month’s election in Bavaria, where the CSU suffered its worst performance since 1950, laid bare broad public disaffection for the governing parties in Berlin.
Political Anxiety
Merkel acknowledged the “anxiety” pervading the political debate, citing the convulsions surrounding the single currency and the social upheaval that’s followed the entry of more than 1 million asylum seekers into Germany since 2015.
Helga, a 78-year-old retired CDU member who identified herself only with her first name, said after Merkel’s campaign speech that the refugee crisis continues to dominate politics.
“It’s a big issue and a lot of people don’t talk about it,” she said, adding that she would still cast a ballot for the CDU. “She hasn’t done everything right.”
The CDU has led governments in Hesse since 1999, the last five years with the regional Green party. The Greens have been the main benefactor of the political shift across Germany, with support surging for the environmental party, as well as for the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Support for Merkel’s party is at 26 percent, down from 38 percent in 2013, while the SPD has 21 percent in Hesse, down 10 percentage points, according to an Oct. 18 Infratest Dimap poll commissioned by broadcaster ARD. The Greens have nearly doubled their support to 20 percent, while the anti-immigration AfD, which is poised to enter the state parliament for the first time, has 12 percent.
Voters Warned
Volker Bouffier, Hesse’s CDU state premier, issued the party’s standard warning of a government led by the SPD or Greens, possibly with the anti-capitalist Left party.
“This would be poison for Hesse, a step backward,” he said.
An urgent factor for Merkel is also the fate of the Social Democrats, who came away from the Bavarian contest with a shock result of less than 10 percent, a historic low. Having reluctantly entered Merkel’s fourth-term government, another political blowout has raised concern within the CDU-led bloc that the SPD’s position within the coalition could become more tenuous.
“The bigger risk for Merkel at this point is probably the SPD,” said Carsten Nickel, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence in London.
To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Donahue in Kassel, Germany at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Nick Rigillo
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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