Merkel’s alliance gains support despite Berlin attack: Poll

BERLIN: Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc is up despite the Christmas market attack in Berlin that killed 12 people, and most Germans are not worried about terrorism, an opinion poll showed on Friday.
Merkel’s conservative “Union” alliance of her Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) rose 2 percentage points from a month ago to 37 percent, the survey by pollster Infratest dimap for broadcaster ARD showed.
The poll of 1,505 voters was conducted from Jan. 2 to Jan. 4. The Berlin attack, in which a rejected asylum-seeker from Tunisia drove a truck into a Christmas market, took place on Dec. 19. He fled and was shot dead by Italian police in Milan four days later.
The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), junior partner in Merkel’s ruling grand coalition, slipped 2 points to 20 percent. The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained 2 points from a month ago to 15 percent, the poll showed.
Merkel’s government has proposed new security measures in response to the Berlin truck attack claimed by Daesh, triggering fierce debate in an election year in which the chancellor, 62, is seeking a fourth term in office. A separate Infratest dimap survey for ARD showed 73 percent of Germans felt safe despite the Berlin attack. AfD supporters were an exception — two thirds of them did not feel safe.
Refugee policy will be the biggest issue for voters in September’s federal election, the poll showed.
Merkel’s conservatives have been bleeding support to the AfD over her open-door policies that allowed into Germany about 1.1 million refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere since mid-2015.
The Bavarian CSU has long bristled at Merkel’s migrant stance and insisted on a limit of 200,000 refugees per year, which she rejects.
Seeking a compromise to end their row before they head into the election together, the CDU and CSU on Thursday floated the idea of a flexible target for how many asylum seekers Germany should accept each year.
The SPD is expected to choose their long-standing chairman Sigmar Gabriel to run against Merkel for chancellor in September’s federal election, senior party sources said on Thursday.
Gabriel, vice chancellor and economy minister in Merkel’s right-left coalition for the last four years, is more popular with the SPD rank and file than his recent predecessors but also has a reputation for being impetuous and unpredictable.
“There’s no way around Sigmar Gabriel as candidate for chancellor at this point,” one senior party source told Reuters.
“The likelihood is very, very, very high that Gabriel will be the candidate for chancellor,” a second source and member of the party’s executive committee added. Party officials stressed, however, that no final decision was expected until the end of January.
Some party members had hoped that Martin Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament, would be named as the SPD’s top candidate in the election, with polls showing he would get more votes than Gabriel in a matchup with Merkel.

Trump policy baffles Berlin
German officials who have held talks with members of US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have not been able to figure out what kind of foreign and security policy his administration wants to pursue, a spokesman said on Friday.
“It ultimately remains the case that there still is no clear, coherent and comprehensive picture of what kind of foreign and security policy the new Trump administration wants to pursue in the world,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer told a regular government news conference.
Trump has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and nominated people seen as friendly toward Moscow to senior administration posts.
Should Trump seek to improve relations with Kremlin, he could unsettle Germany.