It is complicated. The social-democrat Olaf Scholz has currently the biggest chances to become the next German chancellor. But nothing is decided yet in Germany where, on September 26, an extremely volatile campaign ended with the election of the new Bundestag.
The prime minister aka chancellor is not directly elected by voters, but by the majority of the members of the lower chamber of parliament aka the Bundestag. Nevertheless, each major party presents a candidate for the top job aka a Kanzlerkandidat or, if it’s a woman, a Kanzlerkandidatin.
Because of regional and national leveling seats aka adjustment seats (Ausgleichsmandate) due to differences between direct mandates and the proportional share of votes in the mixed-member proportional system in which voters get two votes (one to elect their representative for their single-seat constituency, and one to elect the political party of their choice), the official electoral result is not final yet. Therefore, the so-called vorläufiges amtliches Endergebnis for the 735-member Bundestag aka lower house of parliament can still change.
The Social-Democrats SPD won 25.7% (+5.2% in comparison with 2017) of the vote and 206 seats, notably thanks to its Kanzlerkandidat Olaf Scholz, the most popular among the candidates officially left in the race to succeed Merkel as chancellor.
The Union of the Christian Democrats of the CDU and their small Bavarian sister party CSU finished second with only 24.1% (-8.9%!) and 196 seats. The Green Party ended up third with 14.8% (+5.8%) and 118 seats. The economically liberal FDP won fourth place with 11.5% (+0.7%) and 92 seats. The extreme-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) finished fifth with 10.3% of the vote (-2.3%) and 83 seats. Surprisingly, the extreme-left Die Linke only won 4.9% (-4.3%!). Despite a 5%-threshold to enter parliament, The Left will have 39 seats in the Bundestag thanks to direct mandates. The Danish and Frisian minority of the South Schleswig Voters’ Association SSW—not bound by the 5%-threshold—won one 1 seat. Other parties who could not win seats got in total 8.7% (+3.7%).
In short, Merkel’s Union is no longer the largest group in Germany’s Bundestag. Neverthess, the CDU and CSU Kanzlerkandidat Armin Laschet (*1961) said directly after the election that he wanted to try to form a government under his leadership; a so-called Jamaica Coalition—Union, Greeen and FDP.
According to a recent poll by Infratest dimap for the public TV channel ARD, 52% of the largely economically liberal FDP voters would prefer to govern with the Union rather than with the SPD (only 23% support), but the majority of all Germans do not consider Laschet a possible great chancellor. Before the election, FDP leader Christian Lindner (*1979) had repeatedly expressed that the Union would be the natural ally of his economically liberal party, but of course voters would decide which options would be on the table. After the election, it is clear that many option’s remain on the table. But the option most talked about and most likely in this moment is the so-called Traffic Light Coalition (Ampelkoalition) between SPD, Greens and FDP.
According to a new poll (DeutschlandtTrend) by the public tv channel ARD published today, October 1, 2021 only 18% of voters think that Jamaica would represent a fresh start whereas 51% say that an Ampelkoalition would do the part.
Already before becoming the Union’s official candidate to succeed Chancellor Merkel, Armin Laschet never scored well in polls. During his campaign, terrible floods had hit Germany, including Laschet’s region of North Rhine-Westphalia. He had the unsensitivity to be seen joking and laughing in the back of President Steinmeier who spoke to people in one of the affected areas. The Minister-President of North Rhine Westphalia surely did not laugh at flood victims but, as a political professional, he should have known that the cameras would catch him in this crucial moment and that the images would be devastating for his campaign. Even withouth this misstep, he never looked the part in the eyes of the vast majority of Germans. After the Bundestag election, the pollsters of Infratest dimap asked voters, who would be up to the job as chancellor. Only 27% responded Armin Laschet, 66% said Olaf Scholz.
Armin Laschet’s lack of acceptance goes back to the inner party power struggle. He had only narrowly (52.8% to 47.2%) managed to win the CDU leadership contest against the economic liberal Friedrich Merz who, unfortunately, lacks political executive experience and has repeatedly shown a lack of political instinct, last when, directly after losing the inner-party contest to Laschet, said that he wanted (immediately) to join Merkel’s government as minister of the economy, which Chancellor Merkel of course refused to do; Merz and Merkel were rival’s when he was the leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group and she was CDU chairwoman. He was not considered a team player back then and, after two and a half years of conflict, in September 2002, he was de facto sidelined by Merkel. He stepped down as opposition leader in parliament and later quit politics, ending up working as a corporate lawyer, notably for BlackRock Germany as Chairman of the Supervisory Board from 2016-2020. His political ambitions resurfaced when Merkel announced that she would not run for another term. He entered the race to succeed Angela Merkel as CDU leader and, therefore, as potential future chancellor. It was an open secret that Merkel still had not warmed up to Merz; as mentioned above, she did not want him in her cabinet as minister of the economy.
Armin Laschet lost the 2021 race because too many saw and see in the Bavarian sister party leader Markus Söder the better man. Heavyweights within the larger CDU, notably the President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble, weighed in and helped make sure that the party chose Armin Laschet, the Minister-President of North Rhine Westphalia, to run for the top job. The much more popular Markus Söder, the Minister-President of Bavaria, was left on the sideline. In short, the majority of CDU leaders shot themselves in their own foot.
Wolfgang Schäuble is the popular former finance minister who managed to reduce Germany’s public debt by presenting a balanced budget from 2014 onwards until he stepped down to become president of the Bundestag. At the same time. Schäuble is a born loser—he lost power battles against Chancellor Helmut Kohl whose right-hand man he had been for years, and then against Angela Merkel for the CDU party leadership. In later times, Schäuble clashed with Merkel several times and always lost. In other words, being supported by Schäuble is not a sign that you’re on a winning street.
The non-start of Armin Laschet’s campaign and his many gaffes is one of the reasons why Olaf Scholz managed to lead the Social-Democrats (SPD) to become the largest party in the Bundestag. Another major reason is that the Green Party Kanzlerkandidatin Annalena Baerbock imploded.
The young Green Party co-leader Annalena Baerbock (*1980) lacks political executive experience. And she too made several errors. Her CV was embellished, incorrect. In her 2021 book Jetzt: Wie wir unser Land erneuern (Amazon.de), she “forgot” to quote her souces. In her favor one must add that her book about how to renew Germany now was not a scientific but a political, a campaign effort. Nevertheless, it did not go down well with many German voters because, beforehand, the Greens had repeatedly asked for members of other parties to step down from their political positions when it emerged that they had plagiarized others in books to obtain scientific degrees.
Most importantly, but not widely reported, Annalena Baerbock, born in Hannover, has no understanding of West German postwar history, of the German economic model. She attributed the so-called social market economy (soziale Marktwirtschaft) aka the famous Rhine or Rhineland capitalism to the SPD and not to the CDU, notably Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his Finance Minister Ludwig Erhard, as well as the so-called Freiburg school of economic thought. She probably has never heard of Wilhelm Röpke, Alfred Müller-Armack and other economists.
To make a long story short, the SPD candidate Olaf Scholz has currently not the greatest chances to succeed Merkel as German chancellor because he is so great a leader but because Laschet and Baerbock imploded and because the CDU had prevented the Union’s best horse (Söder), polling much higher than Scholz in the polls, from running. Furthermore, according to a recent Infratest dimap poll, only 9% of Green Party voters would like to enter a Union-led coalition, whereas 83% would prefer to join an SPD-led government.
As late as in July 2021, the SPD was polling around 14%-15%, far behind the Union and the Greens which, both parties, where polling clearly above 20%. Therefore, back then, it did not matter that Olaf Scholz was seen by many as the better chancellor than the Union candidate Armin Laschet and the Green Party candidate Annalena Baerbock. Most people, me included, thought it would come down to a leadership race between the Union and the Greens. The only question seemed to be: would it be a coalition led by the Union or the Greens or would we end up with Jamaica (Union, Greens, FDP).
The rise of Olaf Scholz was also unlikely because, in the 2019 SPD leadership election, he and his partner Klara Geywitz—tandem’s of a man and a woman had to present themselves—lost in the decisive, second round vote against the very dull left-wingers Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken with 45.3% vs. 53.1%. Walter-Borjans and Esken and the majority of the Social Democratic Party base stand and stood for a move to the left. Back then, they were even in favor of leaving the coalition government with the Union of CDU and CSU. The left-wing SPD majority, led by the party-youth (Jusos) federal chairman Kevin Kühnert, favored a renewal in the opposition. Germany’s Minister of Finance Olaf Scholz stood for the opposite: take responsibilty as part of the coalition government, pursuing center-right policies.
Interestingly, during the 2021 Bundestag campaign, almost nobody reminded voters about the past of Olaf Scholz. He was Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s right-hand man, notably as SPD General Secretary and later Chief Whip in the Bundestag. Gerhard Schröder pushed through the so-called HartzIV reforms, which cut Germany’s unemployment rate in half. It came with a heavy price tag: a large low-wage sector, which cost Schröder his job. Angela Merkel largely profited from those reforms, but did not tackle the serious long term problems of low wages, including low pensions for those people.
Olaf Scholz is a teflon candidate. Nothing sticks to him. Wirecard scandal, CumEx scandal, HartzIV, riots at G20 Summit in Hamburg, etc. Voters still trust him.
In short, Olaf Scholz was not good enough as SPD party chairman but became Kanzlerkandidat. Either he moves now himself to the left or, soon, the inner-party power struggle could erupt again. What could lay ahead was shown on September 26, 2021 in Berlin where, simultaneously to the Bundestag election, voters decided in a Berlin-regional referendum to expropriate real-estate companies owning over 3,000 flats in Germany’s capital. The aim is to tackle the problem of rising rents. How rents will sink by exproprating private investors remains a mistery. In 2020 already, the city-state government of Berlin formed by the SPD, the Greens and The Left had tried to impose a rent-cap (Mietendeckel), a decision which the Federal Constitutional Court overturned (incompatible with Germany’s Constitution aka the Basic Law).
Merkel’s CDU, after 16 years in power, has lost steam. However, the SPD governed 12 of the 16 years together with Merkel and, before that, the SPD Chancellor Schröder governed Germany together with the Greens. In short, the country’s renewal will not be easy.
The Merkel years are years of stagnation. Reforms are needed on many fronts. One of the global problems Germany has to face is the fight against pollution—falsely referred to as the fight against climate change; climate change has always existed and will always exist. Under Merkel, Germany remained the world’s largest producer of brown coal. Even new coal mines opened. Under Merkel, Germany missed the digital revolution—some administrations still widely use the fax. Add to this changes crucially needed: pension reform, reform of foreign and military policy, infrastructure reform with schools, bridges, etc. falling apart, EU policy and EU debt reform, health-care reform, electoral reform, the budget currently out of control, etc. Merkel never had an agenda. She adopted themes set by others, mainly the SPD, including the end to nuclear energy, mariage for all, minimal wage, etc.
Will Olaf Scholz become Germany’s next chancellor? Maybe. His position is strong. 48% of SPD voters said they would not have voted for the Social Democrats had Scholz not been the party’s Kanzlerkandidat.
As for the last coalition talks five years ago between the Greens, the FDP and Merkel’s Union, they ended in a disaster. The FDP leader Christian Lindner did not trust Merkel, thought his party’s voice was not heard. He walked away from the talks without trying to renegociate a deal; the Greens and the Union were ready to compromise talks. One of the main problems five years ago: most got leaked—mostly in real time. This time, for the Traffic Light Coalition, Greens, FDP and SPD are committed to secret talks.
If they should fail, Armin Laschet would have a small chance to form a Jamaica Coalition. However, his position is already weakened to the point that he could not impose himself as parliamentary group leader, de facto the opposition leader if Laschet cannot become chancellor. His days seem numbered. Some speculate even about Söder leading possible Jamaica talks.
Last, but not least, let’s not forget that the Grand Coalition aka GroKo has not been voted out. Union and SPD still have a majority in the Bundestag. They could continue to govern together. However, because the Social Democrats are now the stronger party, even in this constellation, Olaf Scholz could claim to become chancellor. Right now, a Traffic Light Coalition looks most likely, but other options remain on the table.
Beauty items at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. — Beethoven sheet music.
Olaf Scholz bei der SPD Regionalkonferenz zur Wahl des SPD-Vorsitzes am 10. September 2019 in Nieder-Olm. Photo copyright © Olaf Kosinsky.
Article added on October 1, 2021 at 12:09 German time. Olaf Scholz “teflon” remarks added at 12:52.
P.S. Added on October 21, 2021 at 22:14. Annalena Baerbock was born in Hanover (Hannover), West Germany (not the GDR). Which makes it even worse that she had no clue about West German history. She moved to Brandenburg in East Germany only as an adult. Added on October 27, 2021 at 21:37: Laschet was seen laughing behind the back of President Steinmeier, not Chancellor Merkel.
