CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel has criticised short-term thinking in modern politics, insisting that politicians, not pollsters, are best placed to chart a country’s future.
The German leader – whose recipe for political success involves equal measures of pragmatism and procrastination – told an audience in Berlin that polling agencies cannot predict the future, nor can they foresee future shifts in public opinion.
“None of the important decisions in post-war Germany had a popular majority when they were passed,” she said, from West German Cold War policy to German unification to the euro.
“Only in retrospect did German public opinion change. I think this is an expression of the primacy of politics, one which should be retained.” Dr Merkel was speaking at an event organised by Germany’s Allensbach Institute polling agency, founded by political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in 1947.
Despite Allensbach’s traditionally friendly relationship with Dr Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the German leader warned that pollsters “trying to get involved in politics” were as dangerous as politicians who “justified their political decision with polls”.
Dr Merkel has experienced at first hand the power of opinion polls. They almost ended her political career after the 2005 general election, when a near 10-point lead in final polls evaporated on election day.
She scraped into power but the German leader has retained a healthy scepticism about polls.
This, she said, is what allows her to get on with the work of governing even though her second-term administration has been crucified in the press and polls alike.
A widespread political dissatisfaction with her second-term performance stretches into the CDU rank and file, in particular party conservatives who accuse the leader of chasing popular opinion and the political centre at the expense of the party’s right-wing.
Like most of us, of course, Dr Merkel is well disposed to an opinion poll that reflects what she wants to see. “According to one poll, some 58 per cent of woman say they prefer wearing trousers to skirts and dresses,” she said, wearing a pair of black trousers and a sky-blue jacket. “I’m no exception to that.”