After Brandenburg, the Bundestag election campaign begins in Germany
Published: Monday, Sep 16th 2024, 11:20
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Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be far away when the first forecasts for the election in Brandenburg flash across the screens in the party headquarters in Berlin on Sunday.
It will then be 12.00 noon for him. High noon. Scholz is attending the United Nations Future Summit in New York, to which all 193 member states have been invited. Germany and Namibia are hosting the event, which has been more than a year in the making, so the German head of government cannot afford to miss it.
A lose-lose situation for Scholz
But perhaps the Chancellor is even quite happy to watch the election results from a safe distance for the time being. After all, Scholz cannot win much in this election.
If Brandenburg's Minister President Dietmar Woidke achieves his goal and makes the Social Democrats (SPD) the strongest party after all, ahead of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is currently leading in the polls, then the word will be out: He only achieved this because he did without the chancellor's election campaign support and even positioned himself against the SPD-led federal government in the migration debate.
If Woidke only comes second and then leaves it to someone else from the SPD to form a government as announced, Scholz and his divided government of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals (FDP) will once again be blamed. A lose-lose situation for the Chancellor.
How open is the K question in the SPD?
There is a third possibility: the SPD is also overtaken by the Christian Democrats (CDU) or the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance (BSW) and loses the post of Minister President. According to the latest polls, the Social Democrats will almost certainly be spared this horror scenario.
But second place could also shake up the federal party a year before the regular date for the general election - and become unpleasant or even dangerous for Scholz.
Ever since the SPD's disastrous results in the European elections and the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, the Chancellor has been considered to be under attack. His personal poll ratings are at an all-time low.
In the federal polls, the SPD is stable at a meagre 14 to 16 percent, far behind the CDU/CSU. The fact that resentment has not yet broken out is mainly due to the election campaign in Brandenburg.
However, Franz Müntefering, of all people, the most popular living former leader of the SPD, has recently said what many in the SPD are thinking: the question of who will run for chancellor in the next Bundestag elections is open, he told the "Tagesspiegel".
And he praised Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who is well ahead of Scholz in all politician rankings. The latter does not present himself as a "fine minister", but is "a mayor type", and that is his strength. "Pistorius comes across as natural and is therefore in the running for important offices."
Greens stand at the 5 percent threshold
The other two "traffic light" parties are also facing a difficult election. The Greens must once again fear for their re-entry into a state parliament: Polls put them at the 5 percent mark.
However, participation in the sluggish governing coalition in Berlin is not in question - even if party leader Omid Nouripour recently used the terms "transitional coalition" and "transitional solution" to make it very clear what prospects he sees for the coalition of convenience with the SPD and, above all, the FDP. However, the party wants to hold out until the general election in a year's time.
With poll ratings of 4% at federal level, the FDP can hardly have any interest in new elections. However, the Liberals are particularly displeased with the "traffic light" government in Berlin.
After the elections in Thuringia and Saxony, where it only achieved 1.1 and 0.9 percent respectively, it was not only the "usual suspect" Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy party leader, who openly questioned the continuation of the alliance. Other members of the Bundestag, such as Gyde Jensen, the deputy leader of the parliamentary group, who is not exactly known as a troublemaker, also joined in.
Compromises on content will become even more difficult
It is already clear that every single "traffic light" party will focus even more on itself after the Brandenburg elections. Sunday evening at 6 p.m. will be the starting signal for the Bundestag election campaign. Compromises on content will then be even more difficult than they already are.
And there are certainly enough issues of conflict in the coalition, from migration policy and the budget to pensions and basic child protection - and therefore perhaps potential breaking points for the coalition after all. "We will no longer take the sensitivities of the Greens in particular into consideration," FDP Vice Wolfgang Kubicki recently told the news portal "Politico" on the asylum debate, for example.
Hardly anyone still doubts Merz
An important decision with regard to the Bundestag elections will probably be made shortly after the elections in the CDU/CSU. There is hardly anyone in Berlin who still believes that CDU chairman Friedrich Merz will allow his candidacy to be taken away.
On Sunday evening, when asked on ZDF whether his decision had already been made, the head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group said only briefly: "Soon." CSU leader Markus Söder and he "will make a proposal and then the CDU and CSU party executive committees will deal with it".
The Bavarian Minister President should also know by now that he has little chance of being called out by Merz or from within the CDU after all. After the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1, Söder made it clear several times in public that he still considers himself a suitable candidate.
However, the CDU does not expect the wind to turn against Merz after the state elections in Brandenburg - even if there is turbulence in connection with difficult government formations in Dresden, Erfurt or Potsdam.
Habeck must also explain himself
If Merz is chosen as the candidate, Scholz and the SPD, who see him as their preferred opponent, will be pleased. The Greens also still have to clarify their K-question. It has been an open secret since the withdrawal of rival Annalena Baerbock that Economics Minister and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck will lead the Bundestag election campaign as the top candidate.
The only question is (almost) when he will make his ambitions official. He is likely to be chosen at the party conference in Wiesbaden in November.
©Keystone/SDA
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