Just a few days ago the Brandenburg Gate, Germany’s setting for spectacular moments, was the finishing line for the runners of the Berlin Marathon. Gold, silver and bronze medals were strung around necks as athletes were still panting into the final straight.

Yesterday it was the turn of FrankWalter Steinmeier, the Social Democrat leader, to use the backdrop of the Gate. But he could not disguise the likelihood that his party followers will be mere stragglers in the campaign to run Germany. In marathon terms, the Social Democrats are the exhausted, well-meaning also-rans, puffing their way to the end to raise money for charity. The party has been in power for 11 years and needs a rest.

“We are in this together,” he said in a scratchy voice to the crowd. “Our goal is for a strong Social Democratic party, for social justice, and to stop the formation of a socially exploitative alliance between the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats.” Not a word about the Social Democrats taking power; its declared aim is to block, to shield Germans from unpleasantness, rather than to rule.

Little wonder that the Social Democrats may be in for a trouncing in the general election tomorrow. Why vote for a party that is losing its will to lead the Left into battle? Why vote for a party whose only chance of government is to creep back into a grand coalition with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats? Why vote at all?

The opinion polls show a slight narrowing of the lead of Ms Merkel. But at least one leading pollster believes the numbers are misleading: the German centre Left is imploding. “We can predict with high probability that the Social Democrats will record their worst result since the war,” says Matthias Jung, head of the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen. “Twenty-five per cent of the vote is the upper limit of popular support for the party.” This has become the don’t care election, fought without passion by politicians who, even at the highest levels, have come to realise that they have only slender possibilities of shaping policy in a global financial crisis.

A Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung survey found that 35 per cent of Germans were undecided how to cast their vote — far more than before any previous election — three days before the polling booths open. More important, 35 per cent are not sure whether they will vote at all. The 2005 election recorded what was, by German standards, a dismal turnout: 77 per cent. This time it could be worse.

Extraordinary measures are being taken to prod Germans to vote. Prisoners, for example, are allowed to cast postal votes so party discussion groups have been set up. Armin Meiwes, jailed for life for killing, slicing up and cannibalising a software engineer, has joined a Green party initiative in Kassel jail.

Before Friday’s rally, Social Democrat activists sent a video clip to hundreds of thousands of suspected non-voters — including The Times correspondent — showing a spoof news item. Free Democrat leader Guido Westerwelle, says a briefly credible po-faced announcer, has been declared Chancellor of Germany — thanks to the large number of non-voters. And the clinching non-voter could now be identified...(insert name). My clip obviously identifies the guilty man as Roger Boyes.

The system of proportional representation and coalition government means that a voter is never sure what he is going to get. No party is strong enough to rule alone and has to seek a coalition partner. As a result, the choice facing Germans is an Angela Merkel-led government that cuts taxes, and an Angela Merkel-led government that introduces a minimum wage of €7.50. Enough reason to get out of bed? Many Germans are not so sure.

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