The ruling Social Democrats have backed their current leader despite low approval ratings
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) leadership has unanimously voted to nominate Olaf Scholz as their candidate for chancellor in the upcoming general election in Germany.
Scholz has headed the German government since December 2021, at the head of the so-called ‘traffic light’ coalition with the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). The coalition imploded earlier this month, after the FDP’s Christian Lindner was dismissed as finance minister.
SPD co-leaders Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil announced on Monday that Scholz received the party’s unanimous backing to head the list of candidates for the February 23 early election.
“It will be cold on the streets, but we have long since reached working temperature,” Esken told reporters in Berlin.
She said the campaign will be a “short, sharp” battle, and praised Scholz as “principled and determined” and the right man for the job, while his chief rival, Friedrich Merz, lacks governing experience.
The 69-year-old Merz has been nominated by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Meanwhile, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has signaled that they will nominate party leader Alice Weidel at their December 7 convention. Scholz’s former coalition partner Robert Habeck has been nominated by the Greens, making this the first-ever German election with four candidates for chancellor.
Esken and Klingbeil’s announcement cut short speculation about the SPD nominating Defense Minister Boris Pistorius instead. German polls have shown Pistorius running ahead of Scholz in popularity, but the defense minister announced last Thursday that he did not want the chancellor’s job.
“The real story is that we have been friends for a very, very long time, that because of his competence and our friendship I asked him to become federal minister of defense, and that we now want to lead and win this election campaign together,” Scholz said during Monday’s press conference.
The most recent opinion polls put the support for the CDU/CSU at 34%, AfD at 18%, SPD at 16%, and the Greens at 12%, with the FDP at 5% and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) at 6% nationally.
Earlier this month, 113 members of the 733-member Bundestag put forth a motion to ban the AfD as a “Nazi party” whose beliefs clash with the German constitution. Most of the lawmakers behind the proposal were Greens, joined by 31 members of the SPD and just six from the CDU.
