Olaf Scholz faces his ‘Biden moment’

Olaf Scholz is facing a “Biden moment” amid growing pressure from his own party to abandon his bid for a second term as German chancellor and make way for the more popular defence minister.

Scholz has the backing of the Social Democratic leadership, which so far supports his bid to lead the party in its campaign for next February’s snap election.

But a growing number of SPD members are expressing concern about his low approval ratings, fearing he could drag down a party already languishing at 15 per cent in the polls, behind the right-of-centre Christian Democratic Union and the far-right Alternative for Germany.

The rebellion favours Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, who is the country’s most popular politician.

“To put it plainly, we have two possible candidates — one is the most popular politician in Germany, and the other is the least popular politician,” Maximilian Mumm, SPD mayor of the west German town of Maifeld, told the Financial Times. “That basically says it all.”

Insa this week found that Scholz was at the bottom of a ranking of 20 German politicians that was topped by Pistorius. A separate survey by DeutschlandTrend found 47 per cent of SPD supporters thought Scholz was not a good candidate for chancellor.

Scholz this month pulled the plug on his deeply unpopular three-party coalition between the SPD, Greens and liberals, paving the way for early elections on February 23.

The dismal approval ratings have prompted some in the SPD to call on Scholz to follow the example of US President Joe Biden and drop out of the race.

Biden passed the torch to vice-president Kamala Harris after a disastrous TV debate performance in June raised doubts about his prospects of winning against Donald Trump. But that still did not prevent the Democrats losing decisively in this month’s election.

In Germany, opinion among the rank-and-file is split. At a party meeting on Tuesday evening there was “no clear majority for Scholz or Pistorius”, said Dirk Smaczny, head of the SPD’s local branch in Rheinhausen-Mitte.

“Some of us said we should stick with Scholz — he’s chancellor after all,” he said. “Others said we should go with Pistorius because . . . they have the impression that people just don’t want Scholz any more.”

At first the rumblings against Scholz were of a private nature. Then local politicians began to speak publicly against his candidacy. Mumm said he would not put up campaign posters with Scholz’s face if he is named as the party’s official candidate.

“He is not a leader,” Mumm told the FT. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have other qualities — he’s intelligent, he has talents. But he’s not the kind of person who can explain to voters what direction he wants to take the country.”

In the past few days, the anti-Scholz mood has escalated into what some commentators are calling an open rebellion. Even some previously loyal MPs have questioned whether he should run.

Some party grandees have also chimed in. Sigmar Gabriel, a former SPD leader and ex-foreign minister, said “resistance to ‘business-as-usual’ with Chancellor Scholz” was growing “every day” within the party. “We need brave political leadership,” he wrote on X. “Whoever lets things slide will take the SPD below 15 per cent!”

Many in the SPD have been puzzled by the stance taken by the party’s ruling executive board, which could have moved quickly to formally anoint Scholz as their candidate for chancellor immediately after the break-up of the coalition.

Instead, it has dithered, allowing the internal debate over who was the best candidate to gather steam.

Some observers are not expecting a formal decision until shortly before the party’s “election victory conference” on November 30, the first campaign appearance for the chancellor candidate.

Scholz, who over the past few days has been in Rio de Janeiro attending the G20 summit, has been evasive on his candidacy. He sidestepped a reporter’s question on the issue, saying only: “We want to be successful together. Together, the SPD and me.”

Commentators say there are now several possible scenarios. Scholz could withdraw his candidacy — an option seen as unlikely. The SPD’s executive board could decide to run with Scholz — the most probable course of events. Or it could decide not to nominate him and plump for someone else, an outcome that is currently viewed as unlikely.

That would be unprecedented. “In the history of the SPD in the postwar period it was always taken for granted that the serving chancellor — be it Willy Brandt in 1972, Helmut Schmidt in 1980 or Gerhard Schröder in 2002 and 2005 — would be the party’s candidate for chancellor,” said Axel Schäfer, an SPD MP from the western city of Bochum. “I don’t understand why they don’t see the logic.”

He added that Scholz was still widely respected by many in the party for leading it to an unexpected victory in the 2021 Bundestag election. “He still has this aura of electoral success — that’s indisputable,” he said. “You have to respect what he’s achieved.”

Some party members also expressed doubts about Pistorius’s capabilities. He is seen as likeable and down-to-earth, and an expert on defence matters, but he is less-versed in economic policy than Scholz — a potential disadvantage in an election campaign that is expected to revolve around bread-and-butter issues such as pensions and the welfare system.

Smaczny said the talk of a different Kanzlerkandidat missed the point. “In the end, it’s the policies that matter,” he said. “If we have a new face, we also need a few new policies. And so far we haven’t talked about that at all.”

Uwe Jun, a political scientist at Trier University, said the fate of Biden and Harris had demonstrated that simply swapping candidates might not solve the SPD’s problems.

“The American example showed that a change of personality alone was not convincing to voters,” he said.

Additional reporting by Laura Pitel

Data visualisation by Martin Stabe