“…In the months leading up to polling day approval, ratings hovered around 40%–43% and eventually resulted in 41.5% (Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 2013), which vindicates the choice of electoral messages that heavily centred on the chancellor’s solid record and her apparently confident steering of a growing economy (Clemens, 2018). For Kallnich and Schulz (2015), the 2013 result testifies to the strongest selling point Merkel’s team kept emphasising, which her adversaries could not rival: Experience, level-headedness, and competence.…”