While Annalena Baerbock and Olaf Scholz make kilometers, Armin Laschet stays in the background.
The Union's current election campaign plans seem telling.
Berlin / Munich - Most recently, Armin Laschet's popularity ratings even rose slightly: In the latest ZDF “Politbarometer”, the Union applicant made up eight percentage points on Olaf Scholz in the popularity ranking.
But that 21 percent of Germans prefer the man of the eternal chancellor parties and 48 percent that of the SPD - it is still nothing more than a demoscopic slap in the face.
The question still arises: Do the CDU and CSU want to hide their candidates for the Chancellery in the final spurt of the election campaign? Weeks ago it was ridiculed that posters with the likeness of Laschet can only be found with great difficulty in many places. Now there is another indication.
Because while Scholz is looking for a concerted appearance on the marketplaces at least on individual election campaign days and sends the Greens Annalena Baerbock (but also co-boss Robert Habeck) on a permanent tour through Germany, Laschet is hardly to be found on the street in the final spurt before the general election.
It is true that the CDU prominently placed Laschet's “trip to Germany” on its homepage.
In fact, the calendar is not least fluffed up with press appointments, association speeches and party events.
A total of twelve public appointments in the narrower sense are noted for Laschet in the entire hot election campaign month of September.
There were six in August.
Bundestag election: Baerbock and Scholz tinker about the big squares - Laschet's plan fill press conferences
For comparison: Olaf Scholz will appear 16 times on marketplaces and in similar contexts in the two weeks from September 11 to 24. At the end of August and September, Annalena Baerbock will have been seen almost 40 times in town squares. Habeck contributes an even larger number of election campaign events - which in itself is of course an interesting fact. Especially at the beginning of the summer break, the Habeck party had come into focus.
In any case, the list of Green appearances seems almost unmanageably long.
Laschet's tour can be quickly scrolled over despite the picture-rich layout and also includes numerous program items such as the “Konrad-Adenauer-Haus press conference”, the planned speech at the CSU party conference or an “editorial meeting” in Nuremberg.
Also noteworthy: Apparently not all dates can be found on the homepage: At least one other date in Warendorf near Münster was not even noted on the CDU website.
The
party initially left
a
Merkur.de
request on Friday afternoon (September 10) about the completeness of the listing unanswered.
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Also noticeable: while Scholz and Baerbock are still heading for metropolises like Munich and Cologne or Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig, Laschet almost completely ignores the big cities in the summer election campaign.
Berlin was already on the Union Chancellor candidate's tour schedule, public appointments in Bremen and Augsburg are still to follow.
Above all, however, Laschet can be found with party colleagues in the province.
Four of the remaining appearances will take place in Seevetal-Hittfeld, Kappeln, Uelzen, Kulmbach.
A legitimate approach - but one as striking as it is unusual.
Do you prefer lashing in the background?
Union candidate barely visible before the federal election - poster debate continues
It is possible that the Union’s election campaign strategists are actually betting on not putting Laschet too heavily in the shop window, for example in the large squares of the media metropolises. A rare election day in Osnabrück ended in August with a rather embarrassing blackout for Laschet. It would also fit the thesis of the candidate hidden in the background that the debate about the apparent lack of Laschet posters simply does not want to die down.
Spiegel Online took up
the topic again
on Friday
: A - of course not representative - anecdotal survey among readers showed that even long car and bike trips through Germany hardly provided any information on billboards with Laschet's face. A man from southern Hesse even reported that, according to statements by a CDU member, the local party association had deliberately dispensed with Laschet boards - more than 80 percent were for Söder as a candidate for chancellor. Recently, speculation about Söder's comeback to Chancellor could be read again. Nevertheless, there were also poster sightings from Northern Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia.
The question of the number of posters for the Union Chancellor candidate ultimately remains officially unanswered: The CSU recently left a request from
Merkur.de
about the strategy in this regard permanently unanswered. (
fn
)