After 16 years, Germany is preparing to bring the curtain down on Chancellor Angela Merkel's era in power, and choose a new chancellor for the country next week.
Germans will go to the polls on Sunday, September 26, for the country's general elections. Analysts believe that it is difficult for a party to win a majority, but it is possible to form a coalition government, according to the "Voice of America" website.
According to opinion polls, Chancellor Merkel is still very popular among German voters, at 60 percent,
a large proportion for a chancellor after 16 years in power. But Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has struggled with its election campaign, with the latest polls showing the party's approval rating at around 22 percent, dropping to 20 percent in some weeks.
Three candidates
The Christian Democrats' candidate for chancellor is Armin Laschet, 60, who is trying to win over voters with the promise of the continuity of Merkel's policies, as he promised them to hold Europe together in these difficult times, build a strong economy and a clear path to national security.
According to the American website, voters may agree to his program, but they do not necessarily agree with the man himself. During a visit to flood-ravaged areas in Germany last July, Laschet was caught laughing during a speech by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which angered Germans.
In contrast, the SPD candidate, Olaf Schulz, leads in the opinion polls by about 25 percent. He previously served as Mayor of Hamburg and Minister of Finance in the current coalition government.
"The strong position of the Social Democrats is a surprise," says Gero Neugebauer, a professor of political science at Frei University in Berlin and an expert on the SPD. "In the past years, they have consistently fallen behind in the opinion polls.
Many said that this was not a crisis for the party, but the beginning of their demise. "But the poor performance of the Conservative Party was in favor of the Social Democrats."
The third candidate is the leader of the Green Party, 40-year-old Annalina Barbock, who in the first weeks came close to revolutionizing the German political scene, but the party's support fell to about 15 percent, placing it in third place.
Paula Pichota, the Green Party candidate for Leipzig, told VOA that the party was ready to form a coalition government.
Surprise is not ready
A poll conducted by the statistics center "Forsa" after the last debate on Sunday showed that Schulz led the debate, with a 42 percent approval rating, ahead of Laschet and Birbock.
But Laschet, who is considered Merkel's natural heir, showed a fighting spirit in the final phase of his election campaign. "We feel that something is moving," Laschet said in an interview with the regional edition of the conservative Die Welt newspaper.
"It looks like a car stuck in the sand," said Wolfgang Schäuble, the head of the German parliament and a central figure for conservatives, adding in an interview with the weekly "De Zeit" that "with every attempt to get out, the car sinks more."
Beerbock, who sparked interest in the spring before making several mistakes due to her inexperience, is out of the race for the top job.
But surprises remain, especially since forty percent of German voters have not yet determined the identity of the person they will vote for, according to a recent study by the Progressive Institute. Added to this are the margins of error in polls and the importance of voting by mail this year due to the pandemic.
But whatever the outcome of the vote, the conservatives are preparing for a historically low result that will stain Merkel's stellar career. The settlement of internal accounts has already begun, as Wolfgang Schäuble, the chancellor, was partially responsible for the decline of the conservative party, noting in an interview Sunday with the newspaper "Tagspiegel" that she had failed to create the appropriate ground for her succession.
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