German rivals woo undecided votes

It remains uncertain whether she will gain enough support to form the coalition she says is needed to push through deep-seated reform of Germany’s sickly economy, or whether she will have to share power with Schroeder’s Social Democrats. Anything may happen by the time voting ends at 6 pm on Sunday, when first exit polls were due. “At 20 per cent plus, the number of undecided is higher than before any other general election,” Richard Hilmer, head of pollsters Infratest Dimap told the daily Die Welt.

The levels were testament to both what is at stake and to the deep uncertainty many Germans feel about the future course of their country.

With the economy in crisis, surveys suggest that most Germans accept the system needs to change but are uncertain about how far and how fast, a dilemma facing other European countries with similar welfare states.

“This means that the German election outcome will be the most important in decades not just for Germany but for Europe as a whole,” Barclays Capital economists Julian Callow and Thorsten Polleit wrote this week. —Reuters