What Merkel’s Campaign Stops Say About Her Plan to Beat Schulz
- Chancellor focuses campaign stops in safe, non-urban districts
- SPD opponent Schulz looking to cities to shore up his vote
Supporters look on during a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) election campaign stop in Saint Peter-Ording, Germany.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
As Chancellor Angela Merkel crisscrosses Germany during the final weeks of election campaigning, she’s scarcely setting a foot outside areas where her Christian Democratic-led bloc topped the poll four years ago.
Of her 50 scheduled campaign stops, 47 are in districts where the Christian Democratic Union or its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union, led on the decisive proportional vote last time, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the results. Germans have two votes in Bundestag elections: the first for a directly elected local candidate and the second that determines the overall national seat shareout.