In view of the weak polls, leading CDU politicians are calling for more momentum in their own party’s election campaign. Schleswig-Holstein’s Prime Minister Daniel Gnther told the “Handelsblatt” about the election campaign so far: “That doesn’t convince anyone.” It now needs a more thorough discussion of the content. “We have to focus on the issues that are important to people.” The claim of the CDU / CSU must be “at least 30 percent”.
“We are currently not meeting our own requirements,” criticized Gnther. The Eastern Commissioner of the German government and CDU member of the Bundestag Marco Wanderwitz was also dissatisfied. “As a union, we have not yet managed to make it clear to the citizens that with Armin Laschet we have the best personnel offer and the best offer in terms of content,” he told the “Rheinische Post” from Dsseldorf. “We have to add more.”
Laschet doesn’t want any other strategy
Laschet, however, refused to change his campaign strategy. “We advertise ourselves and our ideas,” he said during a visit to Torgau in Saxony. “I’m sticking to this strategy.” He does not want to use a harsher tone in the election campaign – for him it is about “advertising for one’s own course”, which must, however, take place in “human form”. He rejects personal defamation.
“Nothing lost yet”
Despite falling polls, nothing was lost for the Union – the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU – a good six weeks before the election, said Wanderwitz. “My feeling is that many voters don’t really know who they want to entrust the land to after Angela Merkel. The CDU has to work out that red-red-green or a traffic light would lead our country into a dead end on the left.”
Survey: Union only at 23 percent
The polls for the Union and especially for the Chancellor candidate Laschet have fallen in recent weeks. A current Forsa survey sees the CDU / CSU at 23 percent – and thus just ahead of the Greens with 20 percent and the Social Democrats (SPD) with 19 percent. Laschet only got twelve percent approval in the survey.
Prime Minister Gnther warned his party against a debate about the candidate. “We as a Union answered the question of who would be the top candidate for us in the election campaign,” emphasized Gnther. “We are wisely advised to pull everyone together now.” He expressly referred the appeal for unity to the CSU. “Because a common success that we achieve with unity is also a success for the CSU,” said Gnther.
The CDU politician named the flood disaster in Germany as the reason for the Union’s previous difficulties in the election campaign, which required Laschet’s attention as Prime Minister of the badly affected state of North Rhine-Westphalia and which prevented him from participating in the election campaign. “This means that you can have a certain hangover in the surveys,” said Gnther. “But hanging also means that it has to go up again.”
Laschet began his campaign tour yesterday, Wednesday, with a visit to a boxing club for young people in Frankfurt am Main. In the Gallus boxing camp, he put on boxing gloves himself and punched a few hits with a trainer in the ring. “We must finally come to a political election campaign, to a clear front position,” emphasized the chancellor candidate from the CDU and CSU.
