Merkel’s conservatives widen lead to 7 points 5 months before German vote

BERLIN, Apr 30: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats have opened a seven-point lead over the centre-left Social Democrats five months ahead of the September 24 election, according to a poll today in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
The Emnid institute survey found the Christian Democrats and their Christian Social Union allies winning 36 percent of the vote if the election were held on Sunday, unchanged from a similar Emnid poll for Bild am Sonntag taken a week ago.
But the Social Democrats (SPD), led by their chancellor candidate Martin Schulz, continued to slide and lost two percentage points in the week to 29 percent.
The CDU/CSU long held a comfortable lead in polls until Schulz was nominated in early 2017 and lifted the SPD to the same levels as the CDU/CSU.
The latest poll, taken just one week before an important state election in Schleswig-Holstein, also showed the CDU/CSU’s preferred coalition partner, the Free Democrats (FDP), rising one point to 6 percent in the last week.
(Reuters)