Never try to call an election in the autumn by invoking the polls of the summer. Western voters have shed ironclad party loyalties; classic predictors like faith, class and city-dwelling are as reliable as the weather report. And yet, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats are holding steady at 42 per cent, up from 34 per cent in the 2009 contest. This is a shade more than the combined take of the opposition Social Democrats and Greens. The German chancellor is heading for four more years in power.
What about her junior partner, the liberal FDP? It is hanging in there at 5 per cent, the minimum level for representation in the Bundestag. Not to worry. Though Germans sniff at these free-marketeers, they vote for them in the end, if only to hold off the greater evil of the high-tax nanny state offered by the “red-and-green” alternative.
In the last two regional state elections, the FDP entered the homestretch polling at 4 per cent, but emerged with twice as much on election day. If the FDP scores 6 per cent, Ms Merkel can look forward to a total of 12 years in power – one more than Margaret Thatcher.