>

Given that I was (pretty much) spot-on 4 years ago, they should save their money, get rid of all those pollsters and listen to me.

Angela Merkel’s at serious risk of buggering it up. Again.

The elections on 27 September are going to deliver a coalition government.

Just depends which one.

The centre/conservative CDU (senior partner in the Grand Coalition with the centre/socialist SPD) and the liberal FDP (CDU’s preferred coalition partner) have been chugging along quite merrily at a combined 50% plus x since the beginning of the year.

They’re now down to 48%, which – as we all know – isn’t a majority.

The SPD’s share of the vote has been steadily drifting downwards from 35% at the last election to 22% at the weekend, mostly due to the Idiot Beck, but they’ve only themselves to blame for that.

The Greens had been cruising along at a mildly irrelevant 10% for much of the time, but are now making ground at 13% and the Linken (discontented ex-SPD voters, what’s left over from the ruling party in (ex) East Germany and sundry malcontents is back up to 12%.

And why?

Because no-one’s electioneering.

Merkel and Steinmeier, chancellor and vice-chancellor respectively in the grand coalition faced up to each other the other week in a “TV Duel”, as the papers called it.

Or a “Duet”, as the they called it the next day.

They obviously can’t rip into each other, because there’s a fair chance of having to coalesce again after the election on Sunday.

But a bit of substance wouldn’t be out of order.

Posters with tag-lines such as “Together for our country” “We have the strength” or “We’re voting for assurance” don’t cut the mustard.

I wouldn’t mind hearing something like:

“We’ve done a pretty good job in the grand coalition (which no-one really wanted), but we REALLY need to do these things (list them) that we can only do in a coalition with the Liberals”

Give people something to vote for, for goodness sake.

A non-vote is a vote for the extreme Right or the extreme Left, because their supporters are motivated.

And they WILL vote.