(MENAFN- The Peninsula) By Rainer Buergin, Stefan Nicola & Arne Delfs / Bloomberg
Angela Merkel is freshening up her campaign persona after 12 years as German chancellor, hobnobbing at Europe's biggest computer-gaming convention as she seeks to reverse her party's woeful record in capturing younger voters.
Days after her first YouTube live interview, the 63-year-old German leader stopped at the Gamescom show in Cologne on Tuesday during a tight schedule of party rallies before the Sept. 24 national election. With an estimated 3 million first-time voters in play, front-runner Merkel and her main opponent, Social Democrat Martin Schulz, have good reason to court the twenty-something demographic.
At the last election in 2013, the two main parties placed first and second nationally, but among those aged 18 to 25, the SPD managed only fourth -- and Merkel's Christian Democratic Union came last.
Merkel's Election Challenges This Time Around: QuickTake Q & A
This time, polls suggest that Merkel has a chance to improve on that performance. Her main selling points -- the incumbent's steady hand at a time of global turmoil, her pro-European stance and presiding over historically low unemployment -- resonate beyond the older Germans that underpin her party's power.
'For many Germans, Merkel stands for stability and security, Manfred Guellner, head of Berlin-based polling company Forsa, said in an interview. 'But that's also what young people want right now. Many of them are already worrying about their pension.
For an interactive look at German coalition options, click here.
Merkel's long time at the helm -- she took office in 2005, the year YouTube went live -- doesn't seem to detract from her popularity, a contrast to the anti-establishment groundswells in elections in the U.S., France and the U.K. A Forsa survey in June found that 57 percent of first-time voters prefer Merkel as chancellor, compared to 21 percent for Schulz. Germans can vote in national elections at age 18, although they can't elect the chancellor directly.
'All of us never stop learning, Merkel said in a speech at the games show, before touring displays by Ubisoft Entertainment SA, Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. Germany's government may need to help create a 'level playing field for game developers after European Union countries such as France and Poland got a head start with support measures, she said.
Support for Merkel's CDU-led bloc rose 1 percentage point to 38 percent while the SPD dropped a point to 24 percent, according to a weekly INSA poll for Bild newspaper published Tuesday. INSA, which previously had the narrowest gap between the election rivals, is now in line with other polls showing Merkel's bloc with a lead of 15-18 points. The two main parties, which have governed in a so-called grand coalition since 2013, were tied in the INSA poll in early April.
Digital Culture
To be sure, Merkel's not alone in chasing the youth vote. Families Minister Katarina Barley, a Social Democrat, is among other political leaders scheduled to attend the show. Yet CDU campaign officials are intent on conveying the message that the chancellor is in touch with digital pop culture, even though Merkel isn't on Twitter.
The party has a lot of catching up to do. In 2013, the CDU's support base skewed further toward the over-60 group, capturing just 5.4 percent of the 18-to-25 age group's votes compared with 6.3 percent in 2009, according to federal election data. The SPD fared a little better, boosting its share to 7 percent from 6.1 percent. Among mainstream parties, the best performer was the Greens with 10.3 percent. But the real winner was apathy, with more than 40 percent of that age group abstaining.
‘Total Flexibility'
Merkel's ability to create a consensus around a wide political spectrum, from progressive to conservative, may help her with younger voters less attached to political ideologies, according to Ulrich Sarcinelli, a political scientist at the University of Koblenz-Landau. She stands for 'total flexibility of values, he said.
Most young Germans 'don't view the word ‘mainstream' as an insult, according to a 2016 study by Sinus, a market-research firm based in Heidelberg, Germany. 'The majority agree that this day and age requires a common set of values comprising freedom, rationality, tolerance and social values, because only those can guarantee the ‘good life' that one has in this country.
Diana Kinnert, 26, doesn't need convincing. She joined the CDU as a teenager, helped draft proposals for freshening the party's ideas and published a book on 'modern conservatism last spring. Dressed all in black and sporting a baseball cap turned sideways, the Berlin-based author said Merkel, Germany's first female chancellor, is appealing because she shuns 'macho politics.
'We're living in disruptive times and young people are looking for stability, Kinnert said.
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