Candidacy for chancellor: Catch-up or failure: Does Scholz still have a chance?

It is a classic false start to the election campaign that the SPD made after the traffic lights went out. Only after an agonizingly long debate about replacing Defense Minister Boris Pistorius as candidate for chancellor did the SPD leadership decide: Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who brought the SPD out of a poll low in 2021 and led it to election victory, should try again.

This time, however, he is starting his race to catch up in a very weak situation – as the head of a failed government and with a party behind him that has shown itself to be anything but united in the last few days. At his first election campaign appearance 14 hours after the decision on the K question, he tried to spread optimism with a joke: the election would take place on the birthday of party leader Lars Klingbeil and his wife Britta Ernst. “So it must go well.”

What is the starting position for Scholz?

It could hardly be worse. Scholz is going into the new election with the aim of making the SPD the strongest party again and remaining chancellor. But in the polls he is very far away from that. The SPD has been stuck in a low for months, currently at 14 to 16 percent. This means that it is only in third place behind the Union and AfD. The gap to the CDU and CSU is 16 to 19 percentage points. The Chancellor’s personal values ​​also leave room for improvement. According to the latest ARD Germany trend, 20 percent are satisfied with their work and 76 percent are dissatisfied. Pistorius, on the other hand, is the only person in the survey with whom the majority of respondents (61 percent) are satisfied.

What about the chancellor bonus?

Incumbents can often benefit from this during election campaigns because they are very present in the media, can make decisions and make a name for themselves on the international stage. After the traffic light went out, Scholz is chancellor of a failed government that is only able to act to a limited extent because it no longer has a majority in parliament. And apart from an EU summit on January 19th and 20th, he will no longer have any major international appearances.

What speaks in favor of Scholz’s candidacy?

He has a lot of government experience. Before his three years as Chancellor, he was both Labor Minister and Finance Minister under CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel. He also governed Hamburg as First Mayor for seven years and therefore knows exactly what makes the states tick. He is deeply immersed in all topics, from the Ukraine war to pensions to the economic situation, and could give long presentations on each one.

The security politician Pistorius would have had to familiarize himself with a lot of things first – this is a problem in such a short election campaign because the risk of failing in public appearances is very high. In addition, Scholz may be able to represent at least one important SPD election campaign issue, the “course of prudence” in the Ukraine war by saying no to the supply of Taurus missiles, more credibly than a defense minister who has set the Bundeswehr’s “war-fighting capability” as a goal.

What else plays a role in the decision?

Scholz is the Chancellor and as such also the SPD’s “natural” candidate for Chancellor. He basically chose himself in the summer. “As chancellor, I will run to become chancellor again,” he said in July. The party leadership got behind him early on and reiterated this stance after the traffic lights were turned off and the new election decision was made.

In order for Pistorius to be substituted, Scholz would have initially had to renounce his candidacy, which would have been against his own convictions. The party leadership should also have jumped over its shadow and corrected itself.

Is the debate about the SPD’s candidacy for chancellor now over?

Scholz and the party leadership hope so. “Now it’s about unity and a common path and it’s about us fighting our way out of this situation together as the SPD,” says party leader Lars Klingbeil. But that is not guaranteed. If the SPD’s poll numbers continue to fall in the coming weeks, the debate could flare up again before the party conference on January 11th. Only then should Scholz be finally chosen as the candidate.

Are Scholz and the SPD now going into the election campaign damaged?

Yes. The SPD did not manage to resolve the K question by consensus. This is a burden for the election campaign. Pistorius also initially remains the much more popular politician, which could accompany Scholz throughout the entire election campaign.

Is there any chance of catching up?

When you ask Scholz about the poor poll numbers, he always points to the 2021 election year. At that time, two and a half months before the election date, he was around 16 percent behind Armin Laschet from the CDU. After Laschet laughed inappropriately in the flood area in the Ahr Valley, the mood changed. The SPD narrowly won against the Union by 25.7 to 24.1 percent. Scholz became chancellor of the first traffic light coalition with the Greens and FDP at the federal level.

This story will be heard from him again and again during the election campaign. However, the starting point was different back then. Scholz was the new guy that people could still be curious about. Now we know him much better and, according to the polls, there is great dissatisfaction with his government record.

What topics does Scholz want to score points with?

Economic and financial policy and social policy will play a major role: secure pensions, an appropriate minimum wage, tax relief for 95 percent of the population. And then there is the Ukraine war. Scholz mentioned this first in his first campaign speech today and promoted his “course of prudence”: arms aid for Ukraine, but no involvement of NATO in the war. And therefore no delivery of the Taurus cruise missiles.

What happens if Scholz fails?

If Scholz fails to achieve his goal of making the SPD the strongest party again, his term in office is likely to end sometime in the spring or early summer. He would then be in office for between three and three and a half years – only two of his seven predecessors and one female predecessor stayed in the Chancellor’s office for a shorter period of time: Ludwig Erhard (CDU, 1963 to 1966) and Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU, 1966 to 1969). If the SPD enters a new government as a junior partner, it is very unlikely that Scholz will step back and become a minister.

What about the party leadership?

An election defeat could also have consequences for them, because the party leaders Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken as well as Secretary General Matthias Miersch are responsible for the decision in favor of Scholz. But then it depends on the election result. Anything below the 20.5 percent of the SPD with candidate Martin Schulz in 2017 would be the SPD’s worst result in a federal election. At the moment the party is at least 4.5 percentage points below in all polls.

What will happen to Pistorius now?

Although the K debate will have an impact, the SPD leadership wants to score points in the election campaign with Germany’s most popular politician. He will play a “strong role,” says Klingbeil.

Pistorius himself won’t hide either. In the video in which Pistorius declared his resignation from running for chancellor on Thursday, he says very clearly that he is seeking a second term as defense minister. “We still have a lot of plans to improve the lives of people in our country,” he says. The second term in office could also be one under a CDU Chancellor Friedrich Merz – as Vice Chancellor with the prospect of more in the next election.