With Merkel going, candidates fail to inspire German voters

By FRANK JORDANS
Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) — A large chunk of German’s electorate remains undecided going into a federal election that will determine who succeeds Angela Merkel as chancellor after her 16 years in office. Recent surveys show that support for German political parties has flattened out, with none forecast to receive more than a quarter of the vote. Merkel’s center-right Union bloc and the center-left Social Democrats are neck-and-neck in the polls, closely followed by the environmentalist Greens, who are making their first bid for the chancellorship. But both the Union and the Greens candidates have seen their support slump after repeated missteps during the campaign. For now, that leaves Finance Minister Olaf Scholz ahead with one month to go.