Few doubt the chancellor’s ‘flatpack’ formula will win her another election, but can it meet the challenges of the next four years?

Throughout her 12 years in power, Angela Merkel’s political obituarists have ever been eager to spot the wobbly legs or worn-out hinges that could signal an imminent collapse – be it over her handling of Germany’s nuclear phase-out, the Greek bailout programme or her handling of the 2015 refugee crisis.

But as Germany goes to the polls this Sunday, what one former campaign leader describes as the chancellor’s “Ikea principle” of pragmatic flatpack centrism is all but certain to hold firm for a fourth election in a row. In latest polls on Friday Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) retained a double-digit lead over her nearest challengers, in spite of a late surge for the third-placed far-right.

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“In Britain and the USA, you have governments that push one agenda, who then get booted out by governments that push a different agenda,” said Lutz Meyer, of the communications agency Fullberry, who orchestrated Merkel’s successful 2013 campaign.



“But with Merkel it’s different. After 12 years, you are still asking yourself: what does she really stand for? We have a kind of social democratic chancellor from a conservative party.”

“That’s less of an agenda than a system,” he added.

Having rubbed shoulders with Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and George W Bush at her first G8 in 2006, Merkel has seen three US, four British, four French and six Italian heads of government while in office. If she sees through a fourth term until the end she will have been in power for 16 years, matching her former mentor Helmut Kohl, who was the longest-serving chancellor of postwar Germany.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest French President Chirac and German Chancellor Merkel address media at Glienicke Palace outside Berlin in 2005 Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/REUTERS

Key to the 63-year-old’s political formula, Meyer said, had been to reconfigure her party to be an umbrella for a wide range of political factions. “Merkel follows the Ikea principle: something for everybody. She is a store no one would be ashamed to be seen shopping in.”

Fittingly, the CDU leader’s 2017 campaign has been conceived not by a political campaigner but by the advertising agency Jung von Matt, which has previously created brand strategies for the supermarket chain Edeka and OBI hardware stores. The agency even built a literal showroom to visualise the party’s values and achievements.

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Located on the border between Berlin’s Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg districts, the CDU’s walk-in manifesto features a state-of-the-art robot that writes out political messages and glues them to a wall, computer games in which visitors can fight off cyber-attacks, and a wall-height computer screen charting the country’s GDP, exports and green energy output in real time. A giant heart representing the booming economy and rendered in red taffeta, sits reassuringly at the centre of the installation and throbs with a strong and stable beat.

“Merkel is viewed as the mother of the nation, even if that sounds over the top,” said Oskar Niedermayer, professor of politics at Berlin’s Free University. “She’s seen to have a protective hand over everything. All she needs to do is gently point at what is going on elsewhere, even in neighbouring countries, and Germans realise how lucky they are.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Angela Merkel with Helmut Kohl in the early 1990s. Photograph: AP

While Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015 had threatened to turn the political mood against her, Niedermayer said, she had managed to regain an impression of being in control precisely by not changing her policy.

“The recipe of her success, which she has only latterly discovered, is that she’s been able to develop an image as someone who is tuned in to the German soul. She lets any aggression shown towards her, as we’ve seen in this election campaign, simply wash off her. Because she is not an ideologist, she’s flexible, which in turn allows her to make mistakes for which she’s forgiven.”

Instead of inspiring an appetite for political upheaval, Britain’s vote to leave the EU and the electoral triumph of Donald Trump have increased many German voters’ desire for pragmatism and stability. “Germans voters don’t want to hear ‘Germany First’, because they know that accepting that Germany can never again be first was our ticket for re-entering the free world,” said Meyer.

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“We may be top in Europe when it comes to economic performance, population and transfer payments, but Germany’s reason of state is that we are not No 1, but No 2. Merkel is the perfect personality to embody that message. She is reticent, can come across as shy on the big stage, and she doesn’t claim to be the most perfect person in the country.”



While the Merkel formula will almost certainly suffice to win another election, not everyone is convinced that it provides the answers for the challenges of the next four years. Since victory has started to look like a foregone conclusion, the CDU’s polling figures have dropped in recent weeks from an impressive 39% to anunderwhelming 34% of the vote in a survey for Insa, down 7.5 percentage points on their 2013 result.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then US President George W Bush addressing reporters at the White House in 2006 Photograph: Michael Dalder/REUTERS

The rise of Alternative für Deutschland, the first far-right party to enter the German Bundestag in over five decades, will add a bittersweet note to her triumph.

On the current programme of Die Distel, a political cabaret theatre in the heart of Berlin’s government quarter, is Wohin Mit Mutti, by far the theatre’s longest-running show, which has so far had more than 180 performances. Translated as Where to Put Mother, a play on Angela Merkel’s nickname, the show’s creators describe it as an affectionate dig at the mother of the nation. “It was born out of the question whether Merkel is still tuned in enough to people’s everyday lives after so long in office,” said Dominik Paetzholdt, the director.



In the play Merkel is given asylum in the home of Germany’s “most average couple” after receiving threats. Their averageness extends to everything they do, from how they brush their teeth to fitting out their flat with “Swedish baroque” (Ikea furniture) to admiring Mutti, yet they quickly grow weary of her presence, resenting in particular how she shirks the housework.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wohin Mit Mutti at Die Distel. Photograph: Marcus Lieberenz/bildbuehne.de

At a recent performance, on a Wednesday evening with an election in the air, it played to a packed house, the audience lapping up depictions of Merkel as everything from a control freak, stealing the batteries of the TV remote so she can restrict what’s watched, to a ditsy flirt after she devours a cannabis “space cake” and comes close to entering a coalition with a leading Green hippy.

“You can’t help but see comic potential in a woman who has said the best thing about Germany is its draughtproof windows,” said Timo Doleys, the actor who plays Merkel, referring to a statement she once made to the tabloid newspaper Bild. “At the same time that statement pretty much sums up why people like her.”

By the end of Where to Put Mother, Merkel has become a part of her host family’s furniture, as pragmatic and flatpack as ever, and they reluctantly accept that despite her flaws and quirks, it would be hard to know what to do without her.

• This article was amended on 25 September 2017. An earlier version said Angela Merkel had outlasted a number of heads of government. This has been changed to say she saw them while serving as chancellor.

