Schroder is four points ahead with chance to end Kohl's grip on power

Germany's Social Democrats go into tomorrow's historic general election a firm four percentage points ahead of their governing Christian Democrat rivals and with their best chance in 16 years of ending Chancellor Helmut Kohl's grip on power.

Two new opinion polls put Mr Gerhard Schroder's SPD 4.0 and 4.5 points ahead of Dr Kohl's CDU. The SPD was registering 40.5 and 42 per cent in the polls, taken by the Allensbach Institute and Forsa/RTL television respectively, while the CDU was scoring 36 and 38 per cent.

Dr Kohl's hopes of a fifth term are further undermined by the opinion poll performance of his allies, the liberal Free Democrats, who are in danger of falling below the threshold 5 per cent necessary to win any seats in the Bundestag. However, the Greens, possible coalition partners of Mr Schroder, registered 6 per cent in the Forsa/ RTL poll.

The former East German communists scored just four percentage points followed by neo-Nazi right-wing extremists at just 3 per cent. A grand coalition between the CDU and SPD remains a possibility.

If the electorate does reject Dr Kohl - and some commentators believe tomorrow's result may see as little as 2 per cent separating the two major parties - they will bring to an end an extraordinary run of success for the Chancellor.

The smart money, however, remains on Mr Schroder. The 54-year-old SPD leader is likely to benefit from a "time for a change" mood and has managed to cast himself as a centre-left moderniser in the mould of the British Labour Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair. Dr Kohl, by comparison, is aged 68, and where once he was the "Chancellor of German Unity", he is now characterised as the "Chancellor of German Unemployment", despite a too-littletoo-late drop of 700,000 to 4.1 million out of work.

The head of the Federal Labour Office, Mr Bernhard Jagoda, said it was very likely that unemployment would fall below the crucial figure of four million this month. The Labour Minister, Mr Norbert Blum, hailed the news as evidence that Germany's fledgling economic recovery was now in full swing.

Both Dr Kohl and Mr Schroder held their final rallies yesterday. The Chancellor was in Mainz, in his home state of Rhineland-Palatinate, for the last of 60 election meetings during the campaign. Mr Schroder travelled to Berlin for a giant rally in the east of the city.

More than 20 per cent of the country's 60 million voters have yet to make up their minds, a statistic that offers hope to the government because political analysts say that at least half of the undecided voters usually choose the party in power.

One voter who has already made up his mind is the racing driver Michael Schumacher, who predicted yesterday that the Chancellor would defy the odds by winning a record fifth term.

"The polls have often been against him, but he's always been the winner at the end. I make no secret of the fact that I'm a fan of Helmut Kohl and that I'll keep my fingers crossed for him," he said.

Many will feel uncomfortable about deciding Kohl's fate