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Polls open in Germany
  | This is the post for discussion of today's election in Germany. We eagerly await reports from the Rantburg EuroBureau... |
Germans go to the polls on Sunday in an election expected to have major implications for economic reform in Europe, with millions of still undecided voters holding the key to the result. Christian Democrat challenger Angela Merkel is expected to emerge as Germany's first woman chancellor, displacing Gerhard Schroeder who has led Germany for the past seven years at the head of a center-left government of Social Democrats and Greens. But with unprecedented numbers of voters still apparently undecided, it is unclear whether she can muster enough support to form the center-right coalition government she says is needed to push through deep-seated reforms to Germany's ailing economy. If she cannot, she will probably be forced to share power with Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) in a "grand coalition" that financial markets fear would produce gridlock and stall the reforms that Schroeder himself has already begun. The final opinion polls published on Friday gave her coalition a slim lead in a race it once dominated.
Posted by: Seafarious 2005-09-18 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=129893 |
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