(Bloomberg) -- Germany's Social Democrats narrowed the gap with Chancellor Angela Merkel's bloc to the closest in more than four years, reinforcing a poll bounce after they chose outsider Martin Schulz to challenge Europe's longest-serving leader.
Support for the SPD jumped 8 percentage points to 28 percent from a month earlier, the highest level since the last election in September 2013, according to the Infratest-Dimap for broadcaster ARD. Merkel's Christian Democratic-led bloc, known informally as the Union, slid 3 points to 34 percent. Half of those surveyed would support Schulz if the chancellor were elected directly, compared with 34 percent for Merkel.
The poll underscores this year's political risks for Merkel, 62, who has previously focused on the challenge by the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD. The unexpected candidacy by Schulz, new to German politics after leaving his post as president of the European Parliament, has opened another front while Merkel seeks a fourth term at the helm of Europe's biggest economy in the Sept. 24 parliamentary election.
As the chancellor grapples with U.S. President Donald Trump's unpredictability, Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War II and a surge in support for anti-establishment forces ahead of elections in France and the Netherlands, the political headwinds at home add to a tumultuous political year in the region.
With Schulz's arrival, the SPD is trailing Merkel's bloc in the ARD poll by the least since the height of the euro-area debt crisis in mid-2012. Even so, the survey published Thursday suggests the Social Democrats wouldn't be able lead a three-way coalition with the opposition Greens and anti-capitalist Left parties, which polled 8 percent each. The AfD, which has harried Merkel with its attacks on her open-border refugee policy, fell three points to 12 percent in the poll.
“All SPD chancellor candidates were off to a great start, so this is by no means unusual,” Karl-Rudolf Korte, a political science professor at Duisburg-Essen University, said Friday in a ZDF television interview. “It would be wrong for the Union to react frantically now.”
Schulz, 61, emerged as Merkel's main challenger last week after party head Sigmar Gabriel stepped aside in the face of low popularity ratings against Merkel.
--With assistance from Rainer Buergin and Zoe Schneeweiss To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Donahue in St. Julian's, Malta at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka, Chad Thomas
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