Schroder ready for battle as polls favour challenger

Beset by poor economic news and another row over politicians' perks, Germany's Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, was preparing yesterday to launch a last-ditch bid to retain his job in September's elections.

With his centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) poll ratings sagging, Mr Schröder has had to bring his final round of campaigning forward by 18 days, and hopes to regain the initiative with a rally in his home city of Hanover on Monday.

The backdrop could barely be less inspiring, with a media storm over claims that members of the coalition government misused air miles earnt when flying on official business.

Earlier this week, Doris Schröder-Köpf, the Chancellor's wife and a former journalist, waded into the dispute, accusing the mass circulation tabloid Bild of waging a witchhunt against the government and its allies.

The row came after more substantial sleaze allegations, which culminated in the sacking of the Defence Minister, Rudolf Scharping, last month.

Perhaps more serious for Mr Schröder, however, is the failure of the sluggish German economy to produce the growth expected by the electorate. In June, unemployment hit a four-year-high of 3.9 million, or 9.5 per cent, and Mr Schröder has long since scrapped his target of bringing the number of people out of work down to 3.5 million by polling day.

His challenger, the Bavarian governor, Edmund Stoiber, has focused on the economy and campaigned this week to attract Germany's industrial heartland, hoping that the voters who helped bring Mr Schröder to power in 1998 are worried enough about their prospects to desert him.

"Unemployment is weighing on people, the fear of unemployment. Our country's competitiveness is too weak, we're bottom of the table for growth – that's what bothers people," Mr Stoiber said after talking with some of the 21,000 workers at a Ford car plant in Cologne on Thursday.

The latest opinion polls are encouraging for the challenger. A survey published this week showed the Social Democrats on 35 per cent of the vote and the opposition Christian Democrats with 42 per cent – a gap three percentage points wider than the previous week.

The poll, by the Forsa polling institute for Stern magazine, put Mr Schröder's junior coalition partner, the Greens, on 6 per cent and the Free Democrats, Mr Stoiber's likely partner, on 9 per cent.

The Chancellor is hoping to pull through by force of his personal standing, on which he has scored consistently higher than his rival. Whether his popularity and charisma are enough will be the crucial question of the final phase of campaigning which includes two television debates with the Bavarian governor. "I'm looking forward to the battle, which we will now wage more intensely," Mr Schröder told ARD television on Thursday night after party leaders met to discuss their strategy in the run-in to the 22 September poll.

Franz Müntefering, the SPD general secretary, said yesterday that the party would concentrate on the fight against unemployment – a weak point so far – protecting workers' rights and defending the state against American-style unbridled capitalism. Mr Müntefering said "the weaker in society must know where they can find refuge" adding that Mr Schröder offered "steady and serious work in international policy [and] a tax policy that leaves the state room to act".

That appeared to be an effort to shore up the core SPD vote, which has been ebbing away. Even union leaders have been reluctant to endorse Mr Schröder directly, instead urging both parties to respect workers' rights.

However, they have hit out at hints by Mr Stoiber's finance and economy aides that, if elected, he might review labour law, loosening the grip of the unions.

But Mr Müntefering dismissed worries over the party's strength in North Rhine- Westphalia as groundless. "The mood is good," he said. "The party is awake and the voters will support the party and Gerhard Schröder."

Election - how the parties line up

Twenty four parties will compete for the votes of 60 million Germans in next month's general election. The two dominant forces are Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SDP), and the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led by the Bavarian Governor Edmund Stoiber and their conservative allies the CSU, the Christian Social Union.

The other parties represented in parliament are the Greens, the liberal Free Democrats, and the ex- Communist PDS. With less than eight weeks to the polls the Conservatives are 13 percentage points ahead of the Social Democrats in polls.

But voters will have the opportunity to mull lists of candidates put up by parties with platforms as diverse as naturism and neo-Nazism.

The neo-Nazi NDP will campaign in 16 states despite government attempts to ban it.

Maverick Hamburg Judge Ronald Schill will offer a further array of far-right candidates with members of his Law and Order party on the ballot in 15 states.

Animal rights campaigners, feminists, pensioners, Communists, humanists and fundamentalist Christians will all be having a go. The Violets, self styled alternative spiritualists, are urging voters to support ecological programmes alternative healthcare, while the German Centre party, founded by Catholics in Bismarck's days, are bidding for a return