There has been movement in the race for the Chancellery. While Armin Laschet and the CDU are threatened with losing the government again, another candidate is sneaking quietly towards power.
On the day when the RTL / n-tv trend barometer dealt him a bad blow, Armin Laschet practiced fighting back. With blue boxing gloves, the CDU candidate for Chancellor demonstrated his will to fight during an election campaign in the Frankfurt boxing camp Gallus.
The CDU candidate for chancellor will need it. Minus three percentage points for the CDU / CSU, the gap to the competitors has melted. Laschet, even in the comparison of the Chancellor candidates, was beaten in last place, even well behind the Green Annalena Baerbock, who was recently a little submerged. “We must finally come to a political election campaign,” Laschet demanded imploringly from the boxing ring.
Chancellor question: momentum with Olaf Scholz
But experience shows that the closer an election comes, the more attention is directed to the respective top candidates. And that’s where the momentum now lies with Olaf Scholz. While Laschet and Baerbock made several faux pas, the Vice-Chancellor quietly achieved by far the greatest approval from voters. No stupid laughs in the wrong place, no stolen quotes in their own books.
In the long run, sobriety and objectivity are particularly popular in this country. This is not news. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has been successfully demonstrating this for many years. For SPD man Scholz that means: Now just no scandal or scandal. It fits that an election campaign spot criticized as negative campaigning and anti-Catholic. And voters do not associate the Wirecard scandal with Scholz; the matter seems too complex.
Comrades see you in the Scholz train in the Chancellery
Scholz has been scoring personally for a long time. What is new is that the previous “candidate without a party” is starting to give the SPD survey wings. The three points that Laschet and the Union lost ended up entirely with the Social Democrats. They are now only one point behind the Greens, who are stagnating at a good level, and even have the best survey result in around three years. For the first time, a green-red-red mandate majority would even be possible. Suddenly the great SPD dream even seems to be able to come true: a Federal Chancellor named Olaf Scholz. He always said that, and that’s how the comrades imagine themselves in the Scholz train to the Chancellery. The hashtag “#ScholzPacktDasAn” is trending on Twitter. That the Schulz train landed on the siding last time – forgotten.
That’s probably how it will be in the 2021 election campaign: Since Angela Merkel cannot be re-elected, trends and play of colors change from week to week, from survey to survey. Anyone who absorbed the mood and reporting on Wednesday could think: The three-way battle for the Chancellery has become a duel between Scholz and Laschet. The candidate with the greatest approval (Scholz) still has the party with the weakest values behind him and the candidate with the lowest approval (Laschet) still has the party with the strongest values. In between: the Greens and Annalena Baerbock.
Greens want to lead the next government
Despite the “clumsy” last few weeks, they want to continue to lead the next federal government, as the Greens federal manager Michael Kellner emphasized once more on n-tv “early start” on Wednesday. Before the crucial weeks “everything is possible”, with 20 percent his party is in a good starting position. The SPD only has “Olaf Scholz, but otherwise it has Olaf Scholz, Olaf Scholz and Olaf Scholz.” Kellner sees climate protection as the major “election-critical” issue, while Scholz and Laschet, on the other hand, have not recognized the signs of the times, he believes. Kellner speaks of a “strong team, led by Robert Habeck”. Only then does he mention the “strong top candidate and candidate for Chancellor Annalena Baerbock”.
Coincidence? Possible. Nevertheless, in the end it looked as if the Greens had taken Baerbock out of the line of fire after the rumble phase. When the hot election campaign kicked off last Monday in Hildesheim, she was at the forefront, but also had Robert Habeck by her side. Baerbock visited the flood areas, but made no media appearance out of them. Smart, if you remember Laschet’s embarrassing laugh in Erftstadt-Blessem. Defensive compared to Scholz, who skillfully showed himself to the side of CSU man Markus Söder in flooded places in Bavaria. Most recently, the 40-year-old was noticed when, of all things, she thought she was in the Oderbruch when the immediate climate program was being presented, while one was standing in the bog area of the Biesenthal basin. You see “Brandenburg for the trees not”, headlined the “Tagesspiegel”. Baerbock is running in Brandenburg; in the same constituency as Olaf Scholz.
46 percent want neither Baerbock nor Laschet nor Scholz
Armin Laschet boxed his way through his election campaign date on Wednesday. The expression on his face indicated that he himself couldn’t take the symbolism of striking back that seriously. Laschet is a Rhinelander. Christian Lindner recently said that the election in favor of the CDU candidate had already been decided. The FDP boss can count himself lucky that he was obviously wrong. Whether Ampel, Germany or Jamaica – his party currently seems to have the most power options in a three-party alliance. And a three-way alliance is becoming more and more likely if it weren’t even enough for black and green in surveys.
Another poll value suggests that Lindner is probably wrong with his assessment: A whopping 46 percent of voters: in the RTL / n-tv trend barometer, they do not trust any of the three candidates for chancellor to do government business. What does that mean for the vote at the end of September? “This election will obviously be a thriller,” said Greens managing director Kellner on n-tv, “everything is possible.”
Sources used:; ; News agencies DPA and AFP
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