The Times: Merkel poll ratings at new low after coalition talks fail
Angela Merkel’s poll ratings fell to an all-time low yesterday after the breakdown of talks on forming a coalition government as the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, stepped up efforts to avoid new elections.
Mrs Merkel appeared to be paying the price for the failure of negotiations, with one snap survey putting her conservatives on 29.2 per cent — the first time they have been below 30 per cent since she took over in 2000.
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Update #1: Merkel TANKS in the polls: Chancellor ratings slump as German anger grows (Business Insider)
Update #2: Half of Germans want new elections after coalition talks fail (Business Insider/Reuters).
WNU Editor: The above Times article is behind a pay-wall, but the poll numbers say it all. The German press has a different take, and they are probably right .... Angela Merkel's German coalition crisis greatly exaggerated (DW). Germany's top two political parties will lose badly in another election, so I will not be surprised if both parties start working together .... Pressure grows on SPD to reconsider coalition talks with Angela Merkel (The Guardian).
1 comment:
Yeah it's really interesting to see how the international press has the knives out for Merkel. Don't get me wrong, from what I've heard from German friends is that she really has become more unpopular - almost exclusively because of the immigration/refugee issue. But when I see the headlines it's all about getting clicks. .everything is being dramatised. This will end badly if the west doesn't understand that under Merkel a lot of growth and stability happened. Yes, there were more than just a handful of deaths through terrorists, but tell me one country where you didn't have terrorists and resulting deaths? I can't think of one. What made it all so personal is perhaps when she said "wir schaffen das"- a rather colloquial way of saying "we can do it" - in reference to the refugee crisis...and then just a few months later you had a truck driving into a Christmas market. If this happens again this Christmas, she's toast. It would be a sad ending to an otherwise stellar and exemplary career and I hope she won't have to suffer it. Her mistake was to show compassion to a degree that outweighed realism. But I rather take that to someone like trump, who touts to be such a tough guy and there's still terrorism on US soil.
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