It would be a tantalizing prospect and a dream come true for Germany's Green party. What could better crown the slow but seemingly inexorable climb to national prominence over the last three decades than an independent Green politician steering Germany as chancellor?
A representative survey conducted by the Emnid polling institute last Thursday and published Sunday in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper indicated that the German electorate may be more open to the idea than previously thought.
A coalition of the Greens and center-left Social Democrats (SPD) would garner 47 percent of the vote if elections were held now - enough to form a majority in parliament, the survey found. The poll also showed that for the first time in German politics, the Greens - not the SPD - would choose the chancellor as the lead party with 24 percent of the vote compared to the SPD's 23 percent.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), however, led the poll's results by grabbing 32 percent of the vote. The free-market liberal FDP, currently the junior member in Merkel's governing coalition, earned 5 percent of the vote, while the Left party polled at 9 percent. ..............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14995915,00.html