The flagging re-election bid of the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, got a boost yesterday with a new survey.
A poll published by the Allensbach institute found that for the first time in three months the number of Germans this month who expect the economy to improve outnumber those expecting it to get worse.
But the survey still put support for Dr Kohl and his ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) over 10 points behind his challenger, Mr Gerhard Schroder and the Social Democrats (SPD).
Support for the CDU is 33 per cent, up 1.4 points from the last survey in late June. Backing for the SPD is stable on 43.8 per cent, Allensbach said. Although Dr Kohl closed the gap slightly, the survey gave the SPD a far wider lead than other recent polls which have put the gap at between three and five points. An Allensbach pollster, Ms Renate Kocher, said the disparity came down to methodological differences.
"Other institutes take past voting behaviour into account when adjusting their results. We do not," she said.
Ms Kocher said the CDU's ratings had been helped by the turnaround in the popular mood on the economy, which leapt in August after a slow pick-up during the course of the year.
The poll shows 31 per cent of those polled expect the economy to improve in the next six months, while 21 per cent said it would get worse. In July, pessimists had outnumbered optimists by 30 per cent to 28 per cent.
Dr Kohl, who likes to joke that he often loses opinion polls but always wins elections, seized on the institute's findings at a campaign news conference in Bonn. "I find the numbers excellent," he said. "I believe that the CDU can change the figures on party support. That is the whole point of the campaign.
"Nobody can be happy with the party figures. But the overall picture is very pleasing. The number of pessimists and optimists has turned around."
Dr Kohl swept to his fourth general election victory on the wave of a strong economic upturn in 1994. But making it five in a row still looks to be a gargantuan task.
"In 1994 the economic recovery had a greater impact on public opinion," Ms Kocher said, adding that the "feelgood" factor would still help Dr Kohl, who will be looking to mobilise the one-third of Germans still undecided about how they will vote on September 27th.
However, Ms Kocher said a recent attempt by Mr Schroder to attribute the economic recovery to expectations of an SPD election victory had backfired with voters. Only 9 per cent of voters believed Mr Schrder's claim on television that "that is my recovery", while 68 per cent did not.
But overall SPD support remains firm, while backing for the Greens remains strong enough to hand a possible "Red-Green" coalition a parliamentary majority.
Greens support was down 0.6 of a point to 7 per cent, while the Free Democrats, junior coalition partners in Dr Kohl's 16-year-old government, slipped half a point to 6.6 per cent. The former communist Party of Democratic Socialism would win 5.2 per cent support, down 0.2 of a point but still enough to gain seats.