Chancellor Angela Merkel travels Saturday to Aachen, hometown of her would-be successor Armin Laschet, in a last-ditch push to shore up his beleaguered campaign 24 hours before Germans vote.

Laschet, 60, has been trailing his Social Democrat challenger Olaf Scholz in the race for the chancellery, although final polls put the gap between them within the margin of error, making the vote one of the most unpredictable in recent years.

Merkel had planned to keep a low profile in the election battle as she prepares to bow out of politics after 16 years in power. But she has found herself dragged into the frantic campaign schedule of the unpopular chairman of her party, Laschet.

In the last week of the campaign, Merkel took Laschet to her constituency by the Baltic coast and on Friday headlined the closing rally gathering the conservatives’

Merkel tugged at the heartstrings of Germany’s predominantly older electorate on Friday, calling them to keep her conservatives in power for the sake of stability — a trademark of Germany.

“To keep Germany stable, Armin Laschet must become chancellor, and the CDU and CSU must be the strongest force,” she said.

A day before the vote, she will accompany Laschet to his constituency Aachen, a spa city near Germany’s western border with Belgium and the Netherlands, where he was born and still lives.

At the other end of the country, Scholz will be holding “dialogues on the future” with voters in his constituency of Potsdam

Source: National News Agency