Armin Laschet looks worn out on Wednesday evening at the beginning of the ARD “election arena”.

No wonder: the election campaign is eating away at the Union's candidate for chancellor.

In the polls, the Union is behind the SPD, after the second triall of the Chancellor candidates, which ran on Sunday, only 27 percent of the viewers found him most convincing - and only 18 percent the most likeable, according to an ARD poll.

And there are only eleven days left until the general election.

Leonie Feuerbach

Editor in politics.

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But as soon as he asked the first question, the tension seemed to fall away. A seventeen-year-old who introduces himself as a member of a school newspaper wants to know whether he would legalize cannabis - and whether he has smoked weed himself. Laschet reacts like something out of a textbook: He thinks the school newspaper is “strong”, that's how he started out himself, and always likes to give interviews to school newspapers. Of course, he has never smoked pot himself. He understands why some people are calling for legalization, but even in family circles he knows people who have become heavily dependent on light drugs. Therefore: "I think it is wrong to legalize cannabis." 

This pattern - a few friendly words, the creation of a personal relationship and finally the more, but often less clear answer to the question - Laschet retained over the 75 minutes of the “election arena”.

He doesn't wear a tie, is relaxed and approachable.

If there is a question about development cooperation, he replies: “Well, you do not believe the way you speak to me from the heart.

Twenty years ago I was on the Development Aid Committee. ”When it comes to racism:“ You know, don't you, I was once Minister of Integration. ”

Elaborately cast viewers

The audience in Lübeck consists of 62 viewers elaborately cast by ARD.

A homosexual asks why he is not allowed to donate blood plasma, a firefighter in a wheelchair criticizes that disabled people often have no chance in the primary job market, a woman who is currently unwilling to vaccinate is worried about the division of society, a Fridays for Future activist wants Listening to Laschet's immediate program against climate change and a man from the Ahr Valley feels abandoned by the state after the flood.

With so many people and topics, the depth of content often falls by the wayside.

Especially since the moderators Andreas Cichowicz and Ellen Ehni are very withdrawn and only ask if Laschet is all too obviously avoiding an answer.

But he manages well to deal spontaneously with many difficult and easy topics in quick succession.

Particularly impressive in a conversation with a student from Stuttgart, who says that many young people in their environment “can no longer imagine having children because they would experience a temperature rise of three to four degrees”. Laschet asks if she is talking about herself and she nods. “Of course, it is really very personal, to the heart, when a young person says I don't know whether I can still have children because of climate change,” he says, visibly touched. He then talks about the need to "speed up climate change" and that the entire industry has to become climate-neutral. "And I would give you the confidence that we can do it," he says, and that he wants to encourage her to have a child. Lo and behold: she smiles at him. Certainly less because the content of his answer convinced her.But because Laschet's emotionality seems honest, the moment is downright intimate.

Laschet said of a long-term unemployed person: “They would be an asset for every company.

Write down your number for me right away. ”The woman is beaming.

But his way of fraternizing with people doesn't catch on everyone.

A social worker wants to know why there is still no legal right to a place in a women's shelter.

"What you are doing is impressive," says Laschet.

She replies that she knows that herself. "I was Minister for Women, in North Rhine-Westphalia we have the highest density of women's shelters," he continues.

She interrupts him belligerently: She doesn't want to hear anything about the past, but what he intends to do in the future.

"What you said hurt me"

Even the sixteen-year-old Fridays for Future activist, who describes his politics as a "catastrophe", does not allow himself to be wrapped up by him. And Laschet also has a hard time with a third woman: The student claims that Laschet only got into many positions through relationships with Catholic student associations. Would he as Chancellor differentiate himself from these? "Why should you differentiate yourself from it?" He asks her, visibly irritated. "What you have said touches me, hurts me," he says: "I ask you to believe what I have brought in as a personal achievement, often around the clock."

Despite these unpleasant moments: Laschet is more interested in personal conversations with voters than the Triell format.

He uses it again and again in the course of the evening in order to actually become personal, as in the answer to the first question in which he spoke of drug-addicted relatives.

Is he therefore more suitable for Chancellor than SPD candidate Olaf Scholz, who remained much more objective in the same format two weeks ago?

Is such a television format at all, or at least more suitable than others, for proving suitability for chancellor?

Either way, the television election campaign will continue at high speed: Tomorrow Annalena Baerbock will speak “Klartext” on ZDF, and in four days the third trio will be on Pro7, Sat.1 and Kabeleins.

And in just eleven days, programs like “Bundestag Election 2021” and the “Berliner Runde” will be running.