2024-09-20 09:50:25
Candidates for Chancellor
The three K-question marks
Updated on 18.09.2024Reading time: 3 min.
The Union has made its decision, and now the focus is on the other key questions. Will the Chancellor become a candidate again? When will Habeck throw his hat into the ring? And what is the AfD doing?
It is actually good news for Chancellor Olaf Scholz: The Union has clarified its K question and is sending its preferred candidate, CDU leader Friedrich Merz, into the race for the chancellorship. Even before the decision was announced, the SPD politician sent a happy greeting to the challenger from Astana in Kazakhstan on Tuesday: “I am happy if Mr. Merz is the Union’s candidate for chancellor.”
Scholz has repeatedly made it clear in recent weeks that he thinks he has the best chance against Merz. But the news is not really good for him. The selection of candidates in the Union is – at least so far – going much faster and more smoothly than the SPD had hoped.
More than a year before the next federal election, which is scheduled to take place on September 28, 2025, the Union now has a candidate – and the chancellor’s party, the SPD, does not yet. Scholz had virtually appointed himself shortly before the summer break: “I will run for chancellor and become chancellor again.” However, there has not yet been a formal decision. It is not expected to be made until the next party conference in June 2025. However, the party executive could make a decision beforehand. However, this is not yet planned for its closed meeting on October 12 and 13, at which the content of the federal election is to be prepared.
Scholz, who has been struggling to get out of the polls with his quarrelsome traffic light coalition for months, now has a K problem and it has a name: Boris Pistorius. The defense minister, who is number one in all rankings of the most popular politicians, has long been secretly discussed in the SPD as a possible replacement candidate for the embattled chancellor.
Just one week before the Brandenburg election, a prominent SPD local politician openly stated this for the first time: “Of course, the most popular politician in Germany is a candidate for chancellor,” said Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter to the “Tagesspiegel”. “If someone like Boris Pistorius has such a reputation, the SPD must also think about whether he is the best choice for the chancellorship or whether they should go into the race with the incumbent chancellor.”
Previously, former party leader Franz Müntefering had declared the K question open in an interview with the “Tagesspiegel” and explicitly praised Pistorius. The debate could gain momentum if the SPD comes in behind the AfD in the Brandenburg election and Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke resigns. Pistorius has now developed a routine for blocking questions about a possible candidacy for chancellor. “You can have lots of ideas, but I don’t have the idea,” he said after Merz’s election at an election event in Potsdam in response to a citizen’s inquiry about it.
The situation is clearer for the Greens. They want to decide this autumn whether they will put forward a candidate for chancellor or, as in the past, only run with a top candidate. The decision is expected to be made before the federal party conference, which is to take place in Wiesbaden in mid-November. It is considered likely that there will be another Green candidate for chancellor, although the poor poll ratings for the party currently offer no reason for this.
After Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that she does not want to be at the top this time, everything is pointing to Economics Minister Robert Habeck. Baerbock was her party’s first candidate for chancellor in the 2021 election campaign. The Greens came in third place with 14.7 percent.
And what about the AfD? It has never nominated a candidate for chancellor. This is because the right-wing party has never achieved results in federal elections that would have made it possible to enter the chancellor’s office. However, it is currently ahead of the SPD and the Greens in the polls with 16 to 19.5 percent.
Another reason against a candidacy for chancellor is the concept of the top duo, which has an integrative effect within the party and which has worked well for the AfD in recent years. Therefore, the question of whether the party really wants to put a single person in the spotlight for 2025 or whether it will once again run with co-party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla as the top duo, is much more difficult to answer than the question of who would be number one in such a case.
Many in the AfD expect that – as things stand – Weidel would then be in the lead. It is still unclear whether there will be a member survey on the matter. At least the federal executive board should soon reach agreement on the process. The question of the chancellor candidate will probably only be formally clarified at a federal party conference next March.