Merkel woos voters one more time to prop up Laschet’s faltering campaign

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As Armin Laschet strode towards Stralsund town hall to deliver one of his last speeches of this year’s Bundestag election campaign, a huge shout went up from the crowd. But the cheers were for the woman at his side.

“We want to see Mutti!” a group of young men chanted, as the Black Eyed Peas hit “I Gotta Feeling” reverberated across the square. “Ohhhh Angela Merkel! Ohhhh!” they went on.

With just four days to go until Germany’s election, the country’s long-serving chancellor had come to Stralsund, the town she has represented in parliament for the past 31 years, to sprinkle stardust on Laschet’s faltering bid to succeed her. 

Europe’s premier stateswoman might be quitting the political stage after 16 years in power, but she continues to enjoy sky-high approval ratings. And the hope in the Christian Democrat camp is that some of her popularity might yet rub off on their candidate Laschet and arrest the decline in their party’s fortunes.

Polls suggest the CDU and its Bavarian partner CSU have the support of 22 per cent of voters, with the Social Democrats of popular finance minister Olaf Scholz on 25 per cent and the Greens on 17 per cent. If the numbers prove correct, the CDU/CSU could be facing its worst result in a national election.

Experts said the key to Scholz’s popularity had been his success in positioning himself as Merkel’s natural heir — a calm, pragmatic, highly experienced politician whom voters can trust.

Merkel’s role in Stralsund was to portray Laschet, not Scholz, as her true successor. She urged the crowd to “contribute to Germany’s prosperity . . . and safeguard its security” by voting CDU/CSU. She said Laschet had fought hard for jobs in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state he governs, “and I’m sure he’ll do it on a national level, too, as chancellor”.

Yet the crowd appeared unconvinced. “Laschet seems like a nice, friendly guy, but chancellor? No,” said Birgit Labude, a local woman. “He has no charisma.”

Merkel’s appearance in this historic Baltic port was a rare event. Since stepping down as CDU leader in 2018, she has generally stayed out of the cut-and-thrust of party politics.

But the disastrous slide in the CDU/CSU’s poll ratings — they have nearly halved over the past 15 months — forced her to act. “When the house is burning down, the boss has to do something,” said Andrea Römmele, professor of communication in politics at the Hertie School in Berlin.

Römmele said the aim was to mobilise CDU/CSU voters whose personal dislike of Laschet had left them feeling apathetic and demotivated.

“What the CDU/CSU has to avoid is a situation where their voters say ‘I don’t like Laschet, of course I don’t want anyone else [to be chancellor], but I think I’ll just stay at home come election day’,” she said. “That is the big danger for the CDU/CSU.”

Speaking in Stralsund, Laschet reiterated his warning that the Social Democrats would form a coalition with the Greens and the hard-left Linke party, which wants to disband Nato.

It was, he said, “completely wrong” to raise taxes, as the SPD was proposing, when Germany needed more jobs and investment. The CDU/CSU, he said, would “guarantee the country’s internal and external security . . . That is impossible with Red-Red-Green”.

But some watching Laschet were thinking of the incident in July when he was caught laughing on camera while a few metres away President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was paying tribute to the victims of catastrophic floods. “That was entirely inappropriate,” said Burkhard Verch, a roof-thatcher listening to the speeches at the town hall. “It’s one of the reasons he’s not taken seriously here.”

Some of Laschet’s internal critics said the incident was blown out of proportion. But they nevertheless have serious misgivings about Laschet’s lack of new ideas and passive campaign.

“He campaigned just like Merkel used to — tiptoeing round all the big issues, not tackling anything head-on, avoiding any strong policy proposals,” said one senior CDU legislator. “Merkel could do that because she always had really high personal approval ratings. Laschet does not.”

Some in the crowd said the party had also been damaged by the protracted contest between Laschet and Markus Söder, the prime minister of Bavaria, over who should run as the CDU/CSU’s candidate.

“They should have resolved that internally, like all the other parties — instead it was in the full glare of the public,” said Marine Schwerin, an accountant. “That really damaged the CDU/CSU. You felt you couldn’t rely on them any more.”

In a sign of what Laschet is up against this Sunday, Schwerin said her loyalty to the outgoing chancellor outweighed her allegiance to the Christian Democrats.

“I don’t identify with the party as closely as I did in 2017,” she said. “When Merkel was running.”