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Merkel eyes centre-right as election nears
Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:34am EDT
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By Noah Barkin
BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on track to win a second term in a German election on Sunday and may be able to form the center-right government that eluded her four years ago, final polls published before the vote indicated.
After running an awkward "grand coalition" with her main political rivals, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), since 2005, Germany's first woman chancellor is hoping to team up with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) this time around.
As leader of a center-right government, Merkel would be expected to pursue cuts in income, corporate and inheritance taxes as well as extend the life of nuclear plants that are scheduled to be phased out over the next decade.
Germany is emerging from its deepest recession since World War Two and the next government will have to rein in a surging budget deficit, cope with rising unemployment and confront a fragile banking sector which has pared back lending as it struggles to emerge from the crisis.
"The economic challenges for the next government are clear," said Joerg Kraemer, chief economist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. "They must bring down the deficit and create an environment in which German firms hire."
A survey by Forsa for Stern magazine, probably the last to be published before the vote, gave Merkel's conservatives a nine-point lead over the SPD, which would virtually ensure she wins a new four-year term.
The Forsa survey mirrored the other polls released over the past few days in giving Merkel's conservatives and the FDP a parliamentary majority.
Center-RIGHT LEAD WAFER THIN
But it also showed that majority is wafer-thin, with conservatives on 35 percent and the FDP on 13 percent, a mere percentage point ahead of the three other big parties -- the SPD, environmentalist Greens and far-left "Linke," or Left.
The most likely alternative if the conservatives fail to get a center-right majority is another "grand coalition" with the SPD, an awkward partnership of rivals that had existed only once in the late 1960s before Merkel was forced into one in 2005.
She worked surprisingly well with the SPD over the past four years, repairing ties with the United States after the strains of the Iraq war, consolidating the budget before the crisis hit and introducing stimulus packages worth 81 billion euros to fight off the downturn.
But analysts fear a new grand coalition would be less stable and harmonious, in part because of divisions within the SPD.
Merkel's hopes of avoiding a grand coalition could hinge on her Christian Democrats (CDU) winning what pollsters estimate could be up to 20 additional "overhang" seats in parliament.
These seats result because each voter in Germany casts two ballots -- one directly for a candidate in his or her constituency and the second for a party.
If a party wins more direct seats than it would theoretically get according to the percentage of second votes, the Bundestag, the lower house, creates extra seats. Continued...
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