SPD candidacy for chancellor: Scholz hopes for a united SPD after the candidate selection

After being unanimously nominated by the SPD board as candidate for chancellor, Olaf Scholz is relying on his party to now join him in the election campaign. He wants to quickly put the clarification of the K question behind him, which many party members perceived as chaotic: “We paused for a moment and thought about what was best to do. Now we are acting together,” said the 66-year-old. That was the mood in the party executive committee, “and also a lot of what I’ve heard in the last few days.”

In a letter to all party members, Scholz expressed his confidence, despite being up to 19 percentage points behind the CDU/CSU in the polls, that he can still turn things around like in the last election: “Together with you, I want to win the coming federal election. And I am “I’m sure: If we fight for it together, then it’s possible.”

All 33 members of the party executive committee voted for Scholz, including Boris Pistorius. In the past two weeks, the party had publicly discussed whether the much more popular Defense Minister should be substituted as a replacement candidate for Scholz, who was ailing after the failure of his traffic light government.

Why is Scholz the better candidate? – No answer

At the press conference, Scholz did not answer the question of why he was the better candidate for chancellor than Pistorius. “We don’t discuss things like that in the SPD,” he said. He has been friends with Pistorius for a long time and asked him to become Federal Defense Minister. Now they want to “run this election campaign together and win”. At the press conference with the two party leaders Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil, Pistorius demonstratively stood at the Chancellor’s side.

Scholz announced that the SPD would campaign for continued support for Ukraine, for the preservation of jobs, for good wages and for affordable energy prices. The future of pensions will also become an issue. “The next federal election will decide whether there is a stable pension in Germany or not.”

Esken swears by SPD for a “crisp and combative election campaign”

Esken said after the nomination: “With his principled, determined manner, he is the right man for the Chancellery.” She vowed her party to have a short, crisp and combative election campaign. “It will be cold on the streets, but we are already at operating temperature.” The SPD is fighting for the people who keep the country running, who are afraid of losing their jobs and whose incomes are under pressure.

Pistorius had only decided not to run for office last Thursday, clearing the way for Scholz to be nominated. In the SPD, however, the deadlock on the K question still has an impact. At the Federal Congress of the Young Socialists (Juso), the youth association of the SPD, there was sharp criticism of the party leadership over the weekend. Juso leader Philipp Türmer accused party leaders Esken and Klingbeil of leadership failure and spoke of a “shit show.”

Esken then admitted: “No, we didn’t give a really good impression when we nominated our candidate for chancellor.” Klingbeil defended the party leadership’s actions against it. “My claim to leadership is that you listen to the party, that you hold debates, that you think in different scenarios,” he said on Deutschlandfunk.

96.2 percent as a benchmark

After the nomination, Scholz’s candidacy for chancellor still has to be confirmed at the party conference on January 11th. This is considered a formality. However, Scholz has to be measured by his result from May 2021 – a good four months before the federal election. At that time, Scholz was confirmed with 96.2 percent of the vote.

At that time, as today, the SPD was polling between 14 and 16 percent. Only a laugh from Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet in the flood area brought about a turning point in the summer: the SPD became the strongest force with 25.7 percent.

SPD wants a duel between Scholz and Merz

The SPD is hoping that the challenger will make mistakes this time too. The party wants to focus the election campaign on the duel between Scholz and Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz. The Social Democrats accuse him of backward-looking politics and want to score points above all with Scholz’s government experience and certainty on issues.

Klingbeil attested to Scholz’s strong nerves, level-headedness and steadfastness. On the other side is Merz: “He has never taken responsibility for this country and the people of this country in a government office. And it would be a very big experiment to elect someone like that to the top of the country, especially in this one times.”

However, when it comes to popularity ratings, the Chancellor continues to perform worse than Merz in the surveys. In the current ZDF “Politbarometer” he is in 7th place and Merz in 5th place. Pistorius is the undisputed number 1. However, the data was collected before the SPD’s decision on the K question last Thursday.

For the first time, four candidates for chancellor

After Merz and the Greens’ Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, Scholz is the third candidate for chancellor nominated by his party for the election on February 23rd. On December 7th, the AfD board wants to nominate party leader Alice Weidel as candidate for chancellor. For the first time, there are four candidates for chancellor in a federal election.