The referendum for the 460,000 members of the crisis-hit SPD is the last hurdle for veteran leader Merkel as she seeks to launch a new government, five months after an inconclusive election. The party's ratings are in freefall, with latest polls giving it just 15.5 percent support -- narrowly behind the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party. 'End of big parties'The mass-circulation Bild daily called the Insa survey it commissioned "a bitter blow" for the SPD, one of Germany's two traditional mainstream parties. An SPD spokesman said the party was looking to cancel the "fake membership". The shift, Spiegel judged, is in line with "the fragmentation of society, greater individualism, the dissolution of traditional socio-economic groups... and the logic of social media".

Source: The Local February 20, 2018 12:45 UTC