The strong showing by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats in last weekend's state elections are good news for his own re-election chances in 2006. Pollsters say the SPD's win in Brandenburg and their entry into the coalition government in Saxony, should mean the party's low popularity ratings are on their way up. Voters angry at Schröder and the SPD for passing tough social reforms could cross over to his side if he maintains his course, wrote the head of the EMNID polling organization. Schröder "could go down in history as the 'reform Chancellor', " Klaus-Peter Schöppner wrote in the Bild tabloid. The opposition CDU, on the other hand, has reached the end of a period in which their popularity soared, he wrote.