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Berlin

Konrad Werner: I saw the sign 2016

Since last week, the streets of Berlin, or their lampposts, have been littered with them: campaign posters for the September city elections. Konrad Werner gives the good (intentions), bad and WTF?!

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SPD: The Social Democrats in power since 2001, took 28.3 percent of the 2011 vote

Strange to think Michael Müller is still only a default mayor – selected by his party more than 18 months ago after former mayor Klaus Wowereit lost the stomach for it – so this his first election campaign as a leading candidate. In fact, it’s so hard to believe, some people aren’t even aware that he’s the mayor. And though the out-of-focus-strolling-round-Berlin poster strategy is well-meaning, it reflects the fuzzy uncertainty of his media persona. Here he seems to have assumed the identity of a creepy random bloke making eye contact with a young Muslim woman in exactly the way that Germans don’t. Note the looseness of the pink headscarf, denoting the moderate, integrated Muslim, not the conservative ones we don’t like.

With the September 18 elections fast approaching, it’s campaigning time again, which means parties have to distill their manifestos onto a bit of A3 plastic on a lamppost, or get ad agencies to do it. Anyway, here are the best, the fair and the worst (or the well-meaning, the desperate, and the creepy-awkward) of this year’s efforts across the political spectrum.