Kohl’s Party Gains Public Support

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Christian Democratic party have risen significantly in popularity, according to public opinion polls conducted this week, and analysts attribute this to the recent visit of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The respected Allensbach poll shows that the Christian Democrats have pulled back from the low mark reached earlier this month and are on the rise again.

Kohl himself, never very popular, has risen sharply in the polls, by almost 10%, according to the Allensbach sampling.

“The Gorbachev visit has had a positive effect on the government coalition,” said Prof. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Allensbach director.

The Allensbach poll found that the Christian Democrats’ popularity was up 2% to 40%, while the opposition Social Democrats dropped 2% to 38%. A poll taken by the ZDF television network came up with the same figures.

The ZDF poll asked, “If elections were held on Sunday, which party would you vote for?” It found that the radical environmentalist Greens party would get 9% of the vote and the far-right Republicans 5%, while the Free Democrats, partners in the ruling coalition, would get 7%.

Although the polls were good news for Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, leader of the Free Democrats, they indicated that the ruling coalition would not attain a majority if national elections were held now.

“The polls clearly show that the Christian Democrats have profited by the Gorbachev visit,” observed Dr. Angelika Volle, a senior researcher at Bonn’s Foreign Policy Institute, “and the Social Democrats have lost. The question is whether the Christian Democrats can take advantage of this turnaround. The Christian Democrats need to find a strategy.”

The higher popularity levels of Kohl and his party were not reflected in the June 18 elections for the European Parliament. The Christian Democrats lost nine seats of West Germany’s seats in the European Parliament, but analysts point out that the elections took place before the full effects of the Gorbachev visit took hold.Many West Germans cast absentee ballots, before Gorbachev’s arrival.

Moreover, the analysts say, because of the system of proportional representation, the Republicans’ 5%-plus share of the votes resulted in a disproportionate loss of seats to the larger parties.

Volle and Noelle-Neumann both attributed Kohl’s higher popularity to his being seen live on television with Gorbachev, rather than in the edited versions of his speech-making normally shown to West Germans.

Both suggested that the Christian Democrats made a major error two years ago when party secretary general Heiner Geissler tilted toward the left in an effort to attract younger voters from the Social Democrats.

“In an effort to gain the center-left,” Volle said, “they lost their voters on the right to the Republicans.”

Political observers say that the late Franz Josef Strauss, the crusty conservative head of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, had kept rightists under the Christian Democratic umbrella, but that now many are voting Republican. Strauss died last October.

Indeed, 15% of the Bavarian electorate voted Republican in the European Parliament elections.

Volle said, “The Christian Democratic strategy should be to get back those who have gone over to the right wing.”

Political analysts note that the brightest star among the Christian Democrats, Premier Lothar Spaeth of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, was seriously tarnished in the June 18 voting because the Republicans ran strongly in his state.

“Spaeth is no longer the golden boy,” Volle said.

As for a new Christian Democratic strategy, Noelle-Neumann said, the polls show that a key reason for the drastic slump in the ruling coalition is the constant wrangling among the three factions: the Christian Democrats, their Bavarian allies in the Christian Social Union, and the Free Democrats.

“All these public quarrels were not good for the government,” she said. “During this vacation period, when people’s minds are not on politics, they should develop a strategy that will heal the breaches in the coalition and address issues that we find really appeal to the voters.”