German Chancellor Angela Merkel. | EPA Merkel to run for fourth term Germany’s leader is already in talks about her election campaign, according to Der Spiegel.

Angela Merkel will run for a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor in 2017, according to a report in Der Spiegel, although she will not officially announce her candidacy until 2016.

According to the report, which cited undisclosed sources, Merkel has already scheduled a meeting with CDU Secretary-General Peter Tauber, who will run the election campaign. She also has apparently discussed her plans with Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CSU — the Bavarian sister party of the Christian Democratic Union.

Merkel became the first female chancellor and the first from former East Germany in 2005. A fourth term would see her become one of the longest-serving leaders in Germany, behind only Helmut Köhl (16 years) and Otto von Bismarck (19 years).

A poll conducted by Emnid in December 2014 suggested that the majority of Germans (56 percent) wanted to Merkel remain as chancellor in 2017.

The decision was widely expected, given her popularity and the lack of any obvious successor. Merkel gave clear signals that she would run at the last annual CDU congress in Cologne in December. She was returned as party leader for the eighth time with nearly 97 percent of votes and promised to keep the combined forces of the left — including her current coalition partners, the Social Democrats.

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