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Angela Merkel looks set to stay in charge of Germany as national elections approach, cementing German prosperity and engagement with Europe. 

- Rachel Stern

In recent times, dissatisfaction has driven elections around the world – be it through the populist pushes away from the governing elite that led to Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory, or fresh faces like French President Emmanuel Macron offering to overhaul a stagnating economy.

Yet in Germany, which holds its own national elections on September 24, there’s a different story; voters are seeking to uphold their status quo rather than oust it, and right now the prospects of that are looking pretty good.

Unemployment, currently at 5.3 percent, has dropped to its lowest level since German Reunification nearly three decades ago. Both salaries and pensions are increasing. Economic optimism has hit a 16-year high, with private spending expected to grow in the next year, according to a survey from the GfK Institute. And in August, the government significantly ramped up state subsidies for up-and-coming industries such as electric cars as well as broadband Internet in less covered regions of the country.

All these signs of stability and growth are a boost for Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose right-of-centre Christian Democrats (CDU) are polling at about 14 percentage points ahead of the Social Democrats and its centre-left candidate Martin Schulz. Should she win, Merkel will enter her fourth term in a country that has been governed by a Christian Democrat for 48 years out of its 68-year modern history as a Federal Republic.

“I think Merkel definitely stands for long-term continuity and I think this is something that a majority of Germans appreciate because it gives degrees of certainty and predictability,” says Joerg Forbrig, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.