Germany’s SPD continues to drop in polls, AfD to third strongest party

“People are looking for an alternative but can not find one”, he said.

Merkel, the clear frontrunner after 12 years in power with a double-digit lead, also told her conservative base not to get complacent and to cast their ballots, rousing them with a folksy call to “bring home the bacon”.

In any case, those campaigning for the Turkish vote, he says, should find a better selling point than evoking the connection of German Turks to the “old country” or accusing them of split loyalties.

A new party emerges: According to NPR, Merkel and the Christian Democratic Union will win the election. Germans head to the polls Sunday. These tensions are not helpful as Spain continues with its rebuilding of the banking system and her economic recovery.

“The election is really not a big thing in Germany“, suggests Gero Decker, the founder and CEO of Signavio, a Berlin-based IT services firm. Stick with me and all will be well. No surprises. No bumps. “Which is extremely appreciated by most Germans”.

“These are just a few rabble-rousers who profit from all the reporting on them”, he continued, urging the media to stop covering the AfD.

NELSON: There’s a number of parties she could partner with. If polls hold, it would mark the first time in 60 years that a far right party would enter the German Bundestag.

That’s not enough to jeopardize Merkel’s hopes for a fourth term as chancellor.

The AfD meanwhile is up two points to 10%.

The AfD could even form the official opposition if, as expected, Merkel must form a coalition government after the vote.

Macron will present “concrete proposals” for European Union reforms on Tuesday (26 September) in the wake of the German vote, amid French hopes that these would become part of the discussions on a new coalition government and its programme in Germany. But the fact that in the Czech Republic most of the protest votes go to the left, specifically the communist party, means that AfD success may not mean more success for the Czech communists.

While Merkel has been pushing her stability and prosperity agenda and Schulz seeking to sway voters with his pledges for greater social equality, the AfD has diverted attention.

“I look in the future”.

Growing support for the AfD is evident in most surveys, most clearly in Emnid’s polling for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. This would be the worst election outcome in the party’s history.

Both Merkel and Macron have pledged to re-invigorate the Franco-German axis at the heart of the EU.

“I think he’s a bit more of a fighter than Angela Merkel is presenting herself at the moment”, Zimmerman says. “We prefer bikinis”. The party’s message is contrasted starkly with the libertarian belief that one ought to have the freedom to choose either a Burka or a bikini.

Stefan Kornelius is the foreign editor of Germany’s daily Suddeutsche Zeitung and has written a book about Merkel.

There was the ferocious French campaign and the surprising United Kingdom result.

DataVard’s Stoeckler, for one, wants the Bundestag to invest more in German schools, so that more tech talent becomes available to early-stage companies. German companies, principally carmakers, have several factories across Visegrad Group countries.

The AfD now has members in 13 of Germany’s 16 state legislative assemblies.

In 2013 their party garnered 4.7% of the vote – missing out on the 5% threshold to sit in German legislature. A former president of the European Parliament, he poses the strongest challenge to her 11-year reign as chancellor. In the 2014 European elections they won 7.1% of the vote, granting them 7 out of 96 seats. If that happens though, Merkel is likely to push for preserving the status quo, since that’s her natural inclination and because she will be pressed by the FDP to resist any further fiscal integration. The presence of the FDP in government will likely change Mrs. Merkel’s stance on certain key issues.

Potential adversaries will be watching, too, looking for any dent in that calm demeanour. Most undecideds were FDP, Green and Left voters, indicating that a higher turnout would help the smaller parties on the left, she said. “They have recently been accused of illegally employing a Syrian refugee as a cleaner”, wrote Alan Posener in The Guardian.