Election race tightens after Schroeder wins TV debate

GERMAN conservative challenger Angela Merkel’s opinion poll lead has shrunk since her TV debate with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and she may not achieve her goal of a centre-right coalition, surveys yesterday showed.

A poll by research institute Forsa, carried out on September 5 and 6 immediately after Sunday’s debate, showed a centre-right coalition between Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) winning a combined 48% of the vote, one point less than the total of all other parties.

Together with a separate survey by pollsters Emnid, which gave Merkel’s coalition a one-point lead, it suggested the debate on Sunday has narrowed the race ahead of the German election on September 18.