Merkel’s party rises to seven-year poll high

BERLIN - Reuters

German Chancellor Merkel is seeking a third term in September’s election. EPA photo

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives have climbed to their highest opinion poll level in nearly seven years but will not be able to continue their center-right coalition with the slumping Free Democrats (FDP), a survey said yesterday.

The Forsa poll published yesterday, nine months before an election, found Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) rising three points to 41 percent, the highest since March 2006.

But her FDP coalition allies fell one point to four percent in the weekly poll for RTL TV and Stern magazine and would fall below the five percent threshold needed for seats in parliament.

The center-left opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and their Greens allies were down one point to a combined 40 percent. The SPD were steady at 27 percent while the Greens fell one point to 13 percent. The Left party was steady at eight percent. Neither Merkel’s center-right coalition nor the center-left would win a majority if those were the election results.