Personality continues to trump policy as German elections loom

Analysis: Armin Laschet's campaign to succeed Angela Merkel is copying her strategy of skirting around hard political choices

Angela Merkel's method of winning elections has earned its own phrase among German political scientists: asymmetric demobilisation", the art of running a campaign that skirts around hot-button issues in order to present voters with a choice between personalities rather than policies.

Three and a half months before Germany goes to the polls, Merkel's aspiring successor Armin Laschet seems to have taken her strategy to heart. With a campaign that has so far failed to tackle the country's hard choices on carbon emissions, digitisation, eurozone integration and military spending, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its candidate for chancellor may get away with it too.