Unpopular candidate for chancellor Why Olaf Scholz is allowed to carry on after a "shitshow"
His coalition has failed, but the German Chancellor is to try again: The SPD is getting its act together and entering the election campaign with Olaf Scholz. A candidate who is much more popular is losing out.
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- After weeks of debate, the leadership of the German SPD has nominated Olaf Scholz as its candidate for chancellor.
- The decision raises questions: his rival Boris Pistorius is far more popular among the population.
- There could be a calculation behind the nomination.
Olaf Scholz will once again be the candidate for chancellor and is to lead the SPD into the short election campaign for the early federal elections in Germany on February 23. This has been unanimously agreed by the Social Democrats' party leadership after a bizarre public debate. Scholz's official election at a party conference in early January is considered a formality.
It was not necessarily foreseeable in recent weeks that Olaf Scholz would actually run for chancellor once again. Many in the party preferred Boris Pistorius at the helm. The Minister of Defense is currently Germany's most popular politician, a buddy type with a down-to-earth approach. Quite different from Scholz, who is often perceived as arrogant and prefers to sit out problems rather than tackle them.
Huge deficit? Scholz can turn it around, the SPD believes
Scholz has not only been tarnished since the end of the traffic light coalition. The politician is considered the most unpopular chancellor Germany has ever had. His personal popularity ratings are in the basement and thus at the other end of a scale led by Boris Pistorius.
His party is hovering around 14% in the latest polls, on a par with the Greens and five percentage points behind the AfD, which is in some areas firmly on the far right. The CDU and CSU have lost ground. Scholz starts 19 percentage points behind his closest rival Friedrich Merz. Can he still turn this around?
The SPD says yes - after all, the starting position in the previous election was similarly hopeless. The SPD, with Scholz as its candidate for chancellor, still narrowly came out on top in 2021. However, this was largely due to public blunders by the then CDU/CSU candidate Armin Laschet.
The whole country is watching the chancellor being dismantled
Germany has witnessed a bizarre spectacle in recent weeks. When he dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner, Olaf Scholz showed the leadership that the country had long been missing. Suddenly, Scholz was a man of clear words, a man who knew what he wanted. For a moment at least.
In the SPD, which was visibly fading in the eternal disputes within the ruling traffic light coalition with the FDP and the Greens, there was briefly a sense of a spirit of optimism. But then the party tore itself apart again. There was a public discussion as to whether the much more popular Defense Minister Boris Pistorius should be substituted for Scholz.
The Chancellor could not even defend himself, he was in Brazil at the G20 summit, while more and more comrades at home were working to dismantle him. There was no word from the party leaders, and Boris Pistorius did not make it clear for a long time whether he wanted to replace Scholz or not. Only last Thursday, after an agonizingly long time, did he announce that he would not run for chancellor.
This paved the way for Scholz's nomination. However, the hanging game on the question of chancellor is still having an effect. The SPD's up-and-coming Young Socialists have given the party leadership a disastrous report card in the crisis over the chancellor candidacy. "What kind of shit show has it actually been over the last few weeks?" asked Juso leader Philipp Türmer.
Is the SPD's calculation working?
There is no consensus in Germany as to whether the decision in favor of Scholz and against Pistorius is the right one. Some see it as "a smart decision - for Olaf Scholz, Boris Pistorius and the SPD."
Scholz because he gets one last chance, the SPD because it can work towards participating in a grand coalition and Pistorius because he is positioning himself as the next strong man in the SPD with his small step back. He can lean back as the "chancellor of hearts" and "will not be the one who loses to Friedrich Merz in the spring", as SWR comments.
In addition, a Pistorius candidacy for chancellor would have entailed incalculable risks: the politician has the image of a shirt-sleeved go-getter. But nobody knows, writes "Focus", whether he also has viable concepts for the problems currently facing Germany: Immigration, climate protection and, above all, the ailing economy.
In any case, the decision could prove to be strategically correct in the election campaign. In Olaf Scholz, the SPD is putting forward a man who has a lot of experience of government work, in contrast to Friedrich Merz, who has no experience of government offices. The party wants to focus the election campaign on the duel between the two: "We will not let Friedrich Merz get away with what we are currently experiencing, that he is hiding, that we are not talking about content," SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil sharply attacked the CDU leader.
The failed simply carry on
For some, however, the decision in favor of Scholz is a missed opportunity. It seems like "a decision that was made based on the internal logic of the party. It shies away from risk. [...] It lacks the will to win." More than the junior partner in a grand coalition is not possible with Scholz, regrets "Die Zeit".
The appointment is bad news for the centrist parties as a whole. "Because it completes an impression that could prove fatal: The three faces of an agonizingly failed coalition - Olaf Scholz, Robert Habeck and Christian Lindner - are simply carrying on as their parties' top candidates."
And Olaf Scholz? He seems to be unimpressed by the power struggle within his party or by poor poll ratings. As candidate for chancellor, he wants to lead the SPD back to power: "Just like last time (...) we want to be ahead, become the strongest party."
