If Germans had gone to the polls last Sunday, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder would now be packing his bags. An opinion poll published on Wednesday shows that Schröder's Social Democratic Party, the SPD, is trailing far behind the conservatives of the CDU/CSU. If voters don't change their minds before the September 22 election, the conservative candidate Edmund Stoiber will become Germany's new chancellor.

Voting for parties, not candidates

Edmund Stoiber benefits from the fact that Germans do not elect the chancellor directly. In direct comparison, he trails behind Gerhard Schröder. 42 percent of the electorate would vote for Schröder as chancellor, 30 percent for Stoiber. Another German polling institute even sees Schröder leading over Stoiber by 20 percentage points.

But that's not the way the Germans elect a new government. The German electorate casts its votes for the members of parliament, who will then determine the new chancellor. So if there's a CDU/CSU majority in Germany's parliament after the election, Stoiber will become the next chancellor. And according to the opinion poll released on Wednesday, 41 percent of the electorate plan to vote for the conservatives, but only 35 percent for Schröder's SPD, which would make Edmund Stoiber the new German chancellor.

Streamlining Stoiber

In recent weeks, Edmund Stoiber has managed to gain considerable ground in popular support – and that's not in the least due to his clever campaign manager Michael Spreng, a former editor-in-chief of one of Germany's best-selling tabloids Bild am Sonntag. Spreng has succeeded in making Stoiber appear more likeable, emotional and competent.

Before he became the conservatives' candidate for chancellor in January, Edmund Stoiber was widely perceived as a technocrat who came across as somewhat cold. And he didn't do himself a favor with a guest appearance on Germany's most popular talk show Sabine Christiansen in January: Stoiber stammered, searched for words and lost track of what he was saying in mid-sentence. He topped things off by addressing the show's host Sabine Christiansen as Angela Merkel, one of Germany's most prominent conservative politicians and for some time Stoiber's rival.

Outside his native Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber didn't have many fans. Campaign manager Michael Spreng has changed all that.

A new fire burns in Edmund Stoiber

Within a few months, Michael Spreng has created a "new" Edmund Stoiber. The contrast to January couldn't be bigger: At a party rally in Frankfurt in June, Edmund Stoiber shook off his dry image once and for all with a fiery speech. Stoiber won the hearts of the delegates with a speech peppered with references to his wife, children and fatherland. Stoiber was all commitment, dedication and duty.

The Frankfurt speech was only the latest highlight in campaign manager Michael Spreng's carefully planned strategy.

Stoiber as the "anti-Schröder"

Michael Spreng has successfully given Edmund Stoiber a new image: the conservative candidate now comes across as a man of the middle, a "serious man for serious times".

Spreng contrasts the "new" Stoiber with Gerhard Schröder's teflon image. One thing Schröder is often criticized for is being non-committal: he changes his mind when he realizes that public opinion is swinging the other way. Schröder's critics also say the chancellor will do anything to grab the attention of the media because he knows he comes across well on TV.

In comparison, Spreng now bills Schröder's opponent Stoiber as "kantig, echt, erfolgreich" – rough-hewn, authentic, successful.

And the majority of the Germans seem to be eating it up.

Schröder hasn't solved Germany's problems – Stoiber says he will

In launching the "new" Edmund Stoiber, Spreng has also managed to pull the rug from under the SPD: the Social Democrats wanted to build their campaign on portraying Edmund Stoiber as a stuttering bureaucrat who is unsuitable for the job. But all of a sudden, the general public doesn't perceive Stoiber like that anymore.

Instead, the voters see that Schröder hasn't managed to solve Germany's problems – unemployment, deficit spending, education - and they want to believe that someone else will. Why not Stoiber? After all, Stoiber's home state Bavaria tops the list in Germany in many of the fields where Schröder's record is weak. And Michael Spreng has told Stoiber to keep making that point.

It appears Germans are so eager to have someone solve their problems, they've completely forgotten that the conservatives have a few skeletons in their closets. The CDU/CSU party funding scandal that rocked the country a few years ago seems to have disappeared from public memory. Forgotten, too, is the fact that the Kohl government destroyed countless government documents and deleted hard drives before handing over power to Gerhard Schröder in 1998.

First we take Bavaria...

Spreng's efforts to boost Stoiber's popularity ask a lot of the conservative candidate for chancellor. When Spreng realized that Edmund Stoiber enjoyed great support in Bavaria but lacked popularity further north in Germany, he prescribed a vacation for Stoiber – but one with a difference.

Normally, Edmund Stoiber and his wife Karin spend their vacations abroad on the sunny beaches of Spain. This year, however, Michael Spreng will make them stay at home: he's arranging a vacation on Germany's Baltic coast for the Stoibers because that's where Edmund Stoiber's popularity is lowest. And if the Stoibers follow their campaign manager's recommendations, they'll be doing a little pressing of the flesh on holiday and, they hope, letting the North Germans get to know Germany's future chancellor.