Greens: Candidacy for chancellor at a low point in the polls? Definitely! (Opinion)

Opinion

Imagine that you were once very popular, that you were capable of anything, even the chancellor’s office. And now imagine that nobody wants anything to do with you anymore, really nobody. Do you? Then you have an idea of ​​how the Greens will feel on September 19, 2024. Confused, silent, and yet strangely unconcerned. Will it be OK? Not like that, no.

The Greens must now make far-reaching decisions, sooner rather than later, in order to get out of the polls. They must counter the toxic image of a dogmatic clientele party that is being forced on them from all sides with a signal of determination. The first step must therefore be: Robert Habeck is now the Greens’ official candidate for chancellor.

Everyone knows who it will be anyway. The Vice Chancellor can still be officially and properly chosen at the party conference in November. Now we need pragmatism and the Green face to it. Otherwise, the downward trend for the party will continue, as can be seen very clearly in a recent Allensbach survey for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. The results, summed up in one sentence: Voters are fed up with the Greens.

According to the survey, they are just as popular with citizens as the FDP and AfD (21 percent each), only 16 percent would like to see the Greens in the next government, a whopping 35 percent do not want that under any circumstances – the latter is only said by more people about the AfD (54 percent). The Greens, who fell to a paltry ten percent in the Sunday question, are currently looking into many deep abysses.

No candidacy for chancellor would be a capitulation of the Greens

This is also due to the political competition, which has targeted the Greens with bizarre zeal. First and foremost Friedrich Merz. No sooner had he been chosen as the Union’s designated candidate for chancellor than he went one step further – against the Greens’ alleged “regulatory frenzy” and of course their alleged “hostility to technology”. The latter is funny because it is the Union, of all parties, that is sowing doubts about e-mobility and ranting against heat pumps.

Black-Green, an option? We’ll see, Merz waves mischievously, definitely not with the Greens of 2024.

A transparent maneuver, no question about it, but the truth is that the Greens of 2024 are doing little to counter this. They are letting the accusations stand because of a false self-image – in a criminal way, as the numbers show. Because the party is clearly not perceived as a governing party of responsibility and reason, which stands out from the constant excitement in Berlin with rhetorical restraint and political energy.

This is also why there is no way around Habeck as a candidate, despite all his weaknesses (keyword: heating law). Like no one else in the party, the Minister of Economic Affairs stands for a political approach that seeks broad majorities in the middle – and to do so also tightens migration policy, has liquefied natural gas terminals built and supplies weapons to war zones. Isn’t that unusual? But it was still unimaginable for the Greens in 2021. Robert Habeck, not least of all, has changed that.

He could make the Greens more accessible again. Not only for a demonstratively skeptical Union candidate for chancellor, but also for voters who clearly do not feel that Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour are reaching out. After all, the party was most successful when they led Annalena Baerbock and Habeck (into the centre).

Given the poor poll ratings, not running for chancellor cannot be the solution either – it would be tantamount to capitulation, giving up any desire for power and influence. The party must now create clarity and officially take up the fight that its competitors have long been fighting. Then perhaps the Greens will succeed in 2025.