Schröder Confident of Election Victory

Several opinion poll have shown the gap between Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD) and Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) narrowing to about six points.

The chancellor, who was largely written off by political analysts in recent months, has managed to halve the gap in the last week after a televised debate with Merkel.

"Wherever I go, I encounter a lot of support. The tide is turning," Schröder was quoted as telling the Sunday edition of the Bild newspaper. "At the end of the day, it is the voters who decide who will become their next chancellor."

The chancellor, whose personal approval ratings have jumped by 11 points since August according to one poll, said the latest polls prove that "the supposed mood for change no longer exists" among the electorate and announced a few extra rallies for the final week of campaigning.

CDU losing ground

By contrast, the CDU and their sister Bavarian party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) appeared to be faltering in the last days leading up to the election.

Several leading surveys at the weekend showed the CDU/CSU losing ground, raising conservatives' fears that they could once again squander a big lead to Schröder, who rallied from 12 points behind in six weeks to win the last election in 2002.

One poll by the Emnid institute showed the CDU dropping 1.5 points to 40.5 percent of the vote last week, while the SPD surged 3.5 points to 34 percent. The SPD has now gained 8 points in the last month while the CDU has lost 3 points.

Another opinion poll showed that the CDU/CSU and their preferred coalition partner, the free-market liberal Free Democrats ( FDP) would fall just short of the 48.5 percent of votes needed for a governing majority.

Many believe that the most likely outcome of the elections thus would be a so-called "grand coalition" between Merkel's conservatives and the SPD with her as chancellor.

But her allies fear that this would make it impossible to implement changes intended to push-start Germany's spluttering economy. "It is a nightmare vision," the prime minister of the eastern state of Saxony, Georg Milbrandt, has warned. "It is pointless to think that a grand coalition could get things moving."

The Kirchhof factor

The conservatives' campaign has also been hit by the appointment by Merkel of Paul Kirchhof as the party's shadow finance minister if the CDU/CSU came to power.

Kirchhof (photo), a former constitutional judge and Heidelberg university professor who has proposed radical tax reforms and committed a series of political gaffes in media interviews, has become a sort of punching bag for the SPD.

Schröder, who has slammed Merkel's reform vision as cold and inhuman and painted a grim picture of what it would do to Germany's social welfare system, has also repeatedly attacked Kirchhof.

The chancellor has stressed that Kirchhof's tax reforms, including a flat 25 percent tax rate without tax breaks, are unrealistic -- a tactic that pollster say has begun to affect voters who are already scared off by Kirchhof.

"Kirchhof has unleashed a wave of insecurity among voters," Richard Hilmer, head of Infratest dimap, told Reuters. "If this trend continues, Schröder could even reach his goal of 38 percent. In any case, the chances of a SPD coalition with the Greens and FDP are much higher now."

Damage control

Merkel and several other CDU leaders have now begun to distance themselves from Kirchhof and instead hinted that they might try and get back Friedrich Merz, a respected finance expert and former head of the CDU parliamentary faction.

The FDP meanwhile held a one-day conference in Berlin on Sunday at which party leaders downplayed the bad news from the polling institutes and defended Merkel's reform vision.

But the press reported Sunday that FDP leader Guido Westerwelle (photo) too was trying to distance the party from radical tax reform proposals by Paul Kirchhof. "This election is not just about clever people's big dreams, it is about creating jobs for Germans," daily Der Tagespiegel quoted him as saying.

The weekly magazine Der Spiegel on Sunday said Kirchhof, "was becoming a liability" and putting at risk Merkel's hopes of avoiding a grand coalition.