2024-07-22 16:15:10
The Greens, who are part of the coalition government, have been weakening in the polls for some time now. Is it even realistic to still consider having their own candidate for chancellor?
Party leader Ricarda Lang is keeping the possibility of the Greens nominating a candidate for chancellor in the next federal election open, despite currently weak poll ratings. “We see that the party system has already changed fundamentally,” she said in a summer interview on the ZDF program “Berlin direct.” If only parties with 30 percent could do it, there would now be exactly one candidate for chancellor, said Lang, referring to the Union. “I don’t think that would be so good for democracy.”
The co-chair added that the Greens cannot, of course, be satisfied with their current poll ratings of 13 percent. “If we say we want to make politics for the broader part of the country, then that has to increase again. And that is what we are working on now.”
The party leader made it clear that the decision as to who would lead the Greens in the 2025 federal election should be made this year. When asked whether there could be anyone other than Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, she said: “I don’t see anyone right now.” However, all other decisions would be made later, “because we don’t have the feeling that now, more than a year before the election, people are primarily interested in personnel issues.”
Habeck is considered the clear favorite for a possible candidacy for chancellor after Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced that she did not want to run again. With her as candidate for chancellor, the Greens received 14.7 percent in the 2021 federal election.