Germans vote in close election to decide Merkel successor
Final opinion polls gave Social Democrats a narrow lead as Conservatives reduced gap in final stages of campaign
Published: 02:09 PM,Sep 26,2021 | EDITED : 06:09 PM,Sep 26,2021
Germany's conservative CDU leader and candidate for chancellor Armin Laschet and his wife Susanne after casting his vote at a polling station in Aachen. - AFP
AACHEN/POTSDAM: Germans went to the polls on Sunday in a national election too close to call, with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) mounting a strong challenge to retiring Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.
Merkel has been in power since 2005 but plans to step down after the election, making the vote an era-changing event to set the future course of Europe's largest economy.
A fractured electorate means that after the election, leading parties will sound each other out before embarking on more formal coalition negotiations that could take months, leaving Merkel, 67, in charge in a caretaker role.
'We all sense that this is a very important federal election,' Laschet told journalists after voting in his home constituency of Aachen. 'It is a federal election that will decide the direction of Germany in coming years and therefore every vote counts.'
Running against Laschet is Olaf Scholz of the SPD, the finance minister in Merkel's right-left coalition who won all three televised debates between the leading candidates.
Scholz, 63, has seen his party's lead over the conservatives squeezed to 1-3 points in final opinion polls, leaving Laschet with a chance of clinching a narrow victory.
'I hope that as many citizens as possible will go and vote and make a very strong result for the SPD possible and give me the mandate to become the next chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,' Scholz said after casting a ballot in his own constituency of Potsdam near Berlin.
The election is expected to yield a splintered parliament, which will force the winner to form a three-way coalition to secure a majority.
The most likely coalition scenarios see either the SPD or the conservative CDU/CSU bloc - whoever comes first - forming an alliance with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
Scholz told supporters in Potsdam on Saturday that his preferred outcome was for the SPD and Greens to secure a majority to rule alone without a third partner.
Both the conservatives and the FDP reject a European 'debt union' and want to ensure that joint European Union borrowing to finance the bloc's coronavirus recovery package remains a one-off. The SPD has talked about taking steps towards a fiscal union.
The Greens favour a common European fiscal policy to support investment in the environment, research, infrastructure and education.
Scholz has not ruled out a leftist coalition with the Greens and the Left party, which wants to pull Germany out of Nato, a red line for the SPD.
With both parties likely to fall well short of the majority needed to govern alone, there could be weeks or even months of fraught coalition negotiations.
After Germany's last election in September 2017, it was February before the CDU-CSU formed a coalition with the SPD.
Laschet, an affable but gaffe-prone centrist and longtime Merkel ally, was for some time the clear favourite.
But his popularity began to wane after a series of blunders over the summer, including being caught on camera laughing in the background during a tribute to the victims of devastating floods in Germany.
In the meantime, Scholz, who at the start of the year had looked down and out in the race, saw his ratings begin to rise as he avoided making such embarrassing mistakes.
Along with social justice, climate change has been one of the top concerns among voters in the run-up to the election.
In Aachen, first-time voter Maite Hoppenz, 18, said that climate change was 'definitely a big topic for me because I think it will certainly have a big impact on my future'. Benedikt Ruedesheim, 33, said he would have liked to see 'a bit more clarity about who is planning what' on climate change as he cast his vote in Berlin. - AFP
Merkel has been in power since 2005 but plans to step down after the election, making the vote an era-changing event to set the future course of Europe's largest economy.
A fractured electorate means that after the election, leading parties will sound each other out before embarking on more formal coalition negotiations that could take months, leaving Merkel, 67, in charge in a caretaker role.
'We all sense that this is a very important federal election,' Laschet told journalists after voting in his home constituency of Aachen. 'It is a federal election that will decide the direction of Germany in coming years and therefore every vote counts.'
Running against Laschet is Olaf Scholz of the SPD, the finance minister in Merkel's right-left coalition who won all three televised debates between the leading candidates.
Scholz, 63, has seen his party's lead over the conservatives squeezed to 1-3 points in final opinion polls, leaving Laschet with a chance of clinching a narrow victory.
'I hope that as many citizens as possible will go and vote and make a very strong result for the SPD possible and give me the mandate to become the next chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,' Scholz said after casting a ballot in his own constituency of Potsdam near Berlin.
The election is expected to yield a splintered parliament, which will force the winner to form a three-way coalition to secure a majority.
The most likely coalition scenarios see either the SPD or the conservative CDU/CSU bloc - whoever comes first - forming an alliance with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
Scholz told supporters in Potsdam on Saturday that his preferred outcome was for the SPD and Greens to secure a majority to rule alone without a third partner.
Both the conservatives and the FDP reject a European 'debt union' and want to ensure that joint European Union borrowing to finance the bloc's coronavirus recovery package remains a one-off. The SPD has talked about taking steps towards a fiscal union.
The Greens favour a common European fiscal policy to support investment in the environment, research, infrastructure and education.
Scholz has not ruled out a leftist coalition with the Greens and the Left party, which wants to pull Germany out of Nato, a red line for the SPD.
With both parties likely to fall well short of the majority needed to govern alone, there could be weeks or even months of fraught coalition negotiations.
After Germany's last election in September 2017, it was February before the CDU-CSU formed a coalition with the SPD.
Laschet, an affable but gaffe-prone centrist and longtime Merkel ally, was for some time the clear favourite.
But his popularity began to wane after a series of blunders over the summer, including being caught on camera laughing in the background during a tribute to the victims of devastating floods in Germany.
In the meantime, Scholz, who at the start of the year had looked down and out in the race, saw his ratings begin to rise as he avoided making such embarrassing mistakes.
Along with social justice, climate change has been one of the top concerns among voters in the run-up to the election.
In Aachen, first-time voter Maite Hoppenz, 18, said that climate change was 'definitely a big topic for me because I think it will certainly have a big impact on my future'. Benedikt Ruedesheim, 33, said he would have liked to see 'a bit more clarity about who is planning what' on climate change as he cast his vote in Berlin. - AFP