Merkel camp jittery as polls shift

few weeks ago, Matthias Wissmann was in a confident mood. As a leading member of Germany's opposition Christian Democratic Party, he was fairly optimistic that the party's leader, Angela Merkel, would be elected chancellor on Sept. 18.

And Wissmann, 56, was pretty sure Merkel would be able to form a coalition government with the pro-business Free Democrats and end the seven-year reign of the Social Democrats and Greens.

But Wissmann, who since 1976 has been repeatedly elected to the Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament, said Thursday that he was taking nothing for granted and admitted that things were becoming "a little difficult."

The "What candidate would you choose in case you could elect directly?" question is a tricky one. It has been continually won by Schröder in the last months, but party poll numbers were widely unaffected by that.

But fact is that in the days before last election, Schröder had a much bigger personal lead over Stoiber than now over Merkel. So, these numbers aren't really good ones.