This undated file photo shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel. (PHOTO / BLOOMBERG)
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party bloc declined for a second consecutive week in a poll that suggests the Social Democrats are gaining ground ahead of Germany’s election in six weeks’ time.
The Social Democratic Party, which hasn’t held the chancellor’s office since 2005, pulled ahead of the Greens for the first time in a year in the weekly Insa poll, Bild am Sonntag reported. Support for the SPD rose 2 percentage points to 20 percent, while Merkel’s Christian Democratic-led bloc fell 1 point to 25 percent, its lowest level since late May.
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrat's candidate for chancellor in the Sept 26 federal election, is proving more popular than Armin Laschet, the head of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and her would-be successor
Support for the Greens was unchanged at 18 percent and the Free Democrats were steady at 12 percent. The latest numbers suggest a possible post-election coalition led by the SPD with the Greens and Free Democrats as partners.
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Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, the SPD’s candidate for chancellor in the Sept 26 federal election, is proving more popular than Armin Laschet, the head of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and her would-be successor. Merkel isn’t running for another term after 16 years in office.
If the chancellor were elected directly rather than by a vote of parliament, Scholz would receive 29 percent, an increase of 2 points from a week earlier, compared with 15 percent for Laschet, according to the poll.
The Aug 9-13 party preference poll of 1,450 people has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
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