A placid election campaign belies Germany’s tensions

IN A muggy sports hall in Schwerin, in the north-eastern German state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Angela Merkel is holding the 53rd of her 59 election rallies. It is a now-familiar routine. There is the thumping music as she arrives, the black-red-yellow “Kanzlerin” (“chancelloress”) placards and the folksy chitchat with dignitaries on the dais. She starts with bread-and-butter concerns like jobs and social spending, then the usual joke about children not looking up from their phones at dinner, then a sweep through law and order (there “can, must and will” be no repeat of the immigrant influx of 2015) and some reflections on global instability. The election is not yet decided, she concludes, before bustling out to a standing ovation.

If the chancellor is going through the motions, that is because the election on September 24th will almost certainly return her to power. Polls give Mrs Merkel’s CDU, together with the Christian Social Union (CSU), its Bavarian sister, a double-digit lead over Martin Schulz’s unhappily indistinct Social Democrats (SPD), with whom they have governed in a “grand coalition” since 2013. International turbulence has only heightened Germans’ temperamental preference for stability and predictability. Jobs, exports and confidence are up. So much for Mrs Merkel’s prediction, when she announced her run for a fourth term as...Continue reading

Souce: Europe http://ift.tt/2fCD20z

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