GERMANY: German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats, trying to win support for painful welfare and labour market reforms, have fallen to a new historic low of 23 per cent, an opinion poll showed yesterday.
The poll of 2,504 Germans conducted by Forsa for Stern magazine and RTL television showed the SPD slipping a point from the previous week to 23 per cent, while their Green junior coalition partners were unchanged at 11 per cent.
The poll numbers of the opposition Christian Democrats were stable at 51 per cent, while the liberal Free Democrats, who would be their favoured partners in any centre-right government, fell one point to 6 per cent.
The poll, which was conducted from October 27th to 31st, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Since narrowly winning re-election last year, Mr Schröder's ratings and those of his party have tumbled as the economy has stagnated and his government has proposed cuts to health and welfare benefits to try to rein in swelling public spending.
The SPD has been humiliated in three regional elections this year, cementing the opposition conservative's control of the upper house of parliament and prompting some on the left-wing of the ruling party to question the government's reform plans.