Olaf Scholz can’t catch a break. The German chancellor started the week on a high after his SPD party won the state elections in Brandenburg by the skin of their teeth. But any illusion that Scholz had won a reprieve from criticism has been brutally crushed. Just one in five Germans think Scholz should run for chancellor again at next year’s election, according to a poll published this week. Worse, Germans have a clear idea of who they’d like to replace him with: defence minister Boris Pistorius.
Two thirds of Germans want Scholz to renounce his candidacy for chancellor and allow Pistorius to step into his shoes, according to a survey by pollsters Forsa. Ominously for Scholz, SPD party supporters are similarly unenthusiastic about him: 63 per cent of those who voted for him in 2021 also think he should step aside.
If replacing Biden has revived the Democrats’ chances of winning the US presidential election, might the same work for the SPD?
Serving as defence minister since January 2023, Pistorius has consistently been considered the country’s most popular politician for at least the last ten months. The German public thinks he is straight-talking and competent, worlds apart from their perception of Scholz, who, according to a survey from the beginning of this month by the broadcaster RTL/ntv, doesn’t even make the top ten. Some in Berlin are beginning to think: if replacing president Joe Biden with Kamala Harris seems to have revived the Democrats’ chances of winning the US presidential election in November, might the same trick work for the SPD?
The chancellor’s popularity has been in terminal decline for much of his time in office, mainly thanks to what the German public has come to view as his inability to contain the infighting of his three-way government coalition. Unpopular policies, including sending weapons to Ukraine, a ban on combustion engine cars and gas boilers, as well as a rise in the cost of living, have not helped matters.
But it is the increasingly heated debate over immigration which is threatening to damage Scholz’s authority beyond repair. Two terror attacks, carried out by rejected asylum seekers who should have been deported, have reignited the debate around Germany’s asylum policy in the crucial last weeks of this month’s state election campaigns.
Scholz’s resulting crackdown on migration with the introduction of controversial border checks – mainly out of a hope this would channel support away from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party capitalising on the attacks – has failed to please anyone. The opposition CDU/CSU has accused the chancellor of not going far enough to stop illegal migration; his own party thinks he has gone too far. An open letter, signed by nearly 11,000 SPD members including MPs, accuses the government of legitimising ‘right-wing populist and right-wing extremist narratives against refugees’ with the new measures.
Over the summer, as the Brandenburg SPD branch campaigned in the run-up to last weekend’s elections, they were acutely aware that the chancellor – whose constituency lies within the state – was more of a millstone around their necks than an asset. Dietmar Woidke, the SPD lead candidate in Brandenburg and newly re-elected state president, refused to appear with Scholz on the campaign trail, and publicly distanced Brandenburg’s administration from that in Berlin. Despite their victory on Sunday, the state party was in no mood to extend an olive branch to the chancellor. Their message was: we won despite him, not because of him.
Despite the increasingly loud chatter both outside the SPD, and now within it, Scholz has remained bullish about his intention to run for chancellor again when Germany heads to the polls next September. Speaking to a group of SPD parliamentarians in Berlin this week he implied they’d be able to replicate the success of the Brandenburg election on a national scale: ‘We’ll do it again next year.’ Many are beginning to wonder whether Scholz is in denial or deluded.
What is hard to ignore is the dire situation the SPD finds itself in the polls. The party is currently polling in third place with 15 per cent; the conservative CDU/CSU is in place with 32 per cent – over double the amount of support – while the far-right AfD holds 19 per cent. Scholz’s coalition partners are faring little better: the Greens are polling at 10 per cent, while the FDP at this rate would struggle to make it over the threshold of 5 per cent to enter into the next parliament.
With twelve months to go until polling day, the SPD is beginning to realise that something has to change. Replacing the party’s leadership seems like an obvious option; this is where Pistorius comes in.
In an apparent effort to staunch the flow of support away from him towards his defence minister, earlier this month Scholz insisted he had Pistorius’s support: ‘Boris Pistorius, like many others, wants me to run for chancellor again,’ he claimed. ‘I see it exactly the same way.’ Quite what Pistorius thinks of the matter is, as yet, unclear.
Despite Scholz’s insistence he will lead the SPD into the federal election, the party won’t actually look to confirm their nominated candidate until at least early next year. This will allow party officials to keep their options open and, should Scholz show further signs of buckling under pressure, their cards close to their chest. One thing, however, looks increasingly certain: chancellor or not, Scholz is on borrowed time.
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