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German's Merkel 'Pop-up' Campaigns on Streets Ahead of Vote


German Chancellor and CDU top candidate Angela Merkel speaks during an election campaign meeting in Giessen, Germany, Sept.4, 2013.
German Chancellor and CDU top candidate Angela Merkel speaks during an election campaign meeting in Giessen, Germany, Sept.4, 2013.
Angela Merkel's election campaign team launched a 'Merkel app' for smartphones on Thursday that appears to make outdoor billboard posters of the German chancellor speak directly to voters.

Use of the cutting-edge technology appeared to be a first for German politics, which is gearing up for an election on September 22 whose final outcome is still hard to call.

The app automatically recognizes Merkel's face through a camera when held up to a campaign poster with her image and begins playing a video featuring her as a pop-up talking head.

On the smartphone screen, Merkel, wearing a red suit and smiling broadly, appears to speak out of the poster and says: “Germany is doing well today but we cannot take this for granted. I want us to be successful in the future together.”

Merkel's campaign manager Hermann Groehe said he hoped the new app would help mobilize more voters to support her conservatives in what he said would be a “tight race”.

Merkel's conservatives are well ahead in opinion polls but she may lack enough support to recreate her centre-right coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats and may end up in a “grand coalition” with the opposition Social Democrats.
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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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