You can be forgiven for not having followed every twist and turn of this year’s German election campaign. Without a pantomime villain such as Geert Wilders or Marine Le Pen, and with Angela Merkel so comfortably ahead in the polls, the Bundestag election has received less coverage than other European elections this year. So for those who want to mug up ahead of Sunday, here are the salient points from my Brief guide to the German election, co-authored with Claudia Chwalisz, and published by the Legatum Institute. Bar anything exceptional happening, it looks like Germany will have another four years with ‘Mutti’ at the helm. The strong performance of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is directly linked to her leadership — she is more popular than…

Source: The Times September 22, 2017 00:22 UTC