It was a puzzling experience for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At a rally last week in Hamburg, the leader of the Christian Democrats — and the expected winner of Sunday's national elections — gave her stock election speech, which usually elicits occasional rounds of polite applause. This time, however, every sentence was punctuated by loud cheers of "Yeah!" from a small part of the crowd. A similar thing happened in the city of Mainz three days later. Again, there were shouts of "Yeah!" following each line of Merkel's speech. Other people in the crowd repeated random words, such as fünf (five), Hintertür (backdoor) and Wachstum (growth).
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