Updated on February 16, 2018 at 09:34 Berlin time: According to a poll by Infratest Dimap for the German public television channel ARD, realized between February 13 and 15 and published on February 15, the Social Democratic Party of Germany has fallen to a record low voter approval of only 16%. That is -2% in comparison with the last poll realized between January 30 and 31. At the same time, the populist and nationalist AfD has risen by 1% to 15%, just one point behind the SPD.
Article added on February 14, 2018 at 15:43 Berlin time: In the 2017 parliamentary election, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) imploded. It has not recovered since then. On the contrary.
Why did the former president of the EU Parliament Martin Schulz (2012-2017) become the SPD’s leader and lead candidate in the 2017 election? Because it was a suicide commando to try to unseat Chancellor Merkel. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the campaign, the Schulz euphoria was great. In some polls in March 2017, the SPD ranked even before the CDU, something unheard of in a decade!
The beginning of the 2017 election campaign showed that Chancellor Merkel was by no way the all powerful, dominating figure, but vulnerable if only a credible contender would show up.
In March 2017, in a secret ballot, where discontent could easily have been expressed, Martin Schulz was elected party leader by all 600 SPD party delegates (100%!).
But the honeymoon with voters lasted not long — and rightly so. Martin Schulz is is a man without real executive experience. In the 1980s, he was elected mayor of the small town of Würselen (40,000 inhabitants). But that was at a time when the mayor had more representative duties than real power.
More importantly for his potential voters, they had initially perceived him as a kind of German Sanders or Corbyn who would move the Social Democratic Party of Germany to the left. When it emerged that he was rather a centrist like Merkel, his ratings went dramatically down. In addition, when he was riding high in the polls, he forget to stay in the news with substantial proposals.
There was room for substantial attacks on Merkel, one of the most overrated politicians. Germany has a large, low wage job sector with de-facto subsidized, low-skilled workers. Unfortunately for Schulz, they are the result of the reforms by the Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and one of the reasons why the SPD lost many voters and party members over the past years. Some of the reforms were needed and helped reduce Germany’s unemployment problem. Others were simply cynical, especially given the fact that they were coming from the workers party SPD. Nevertheless, the current dreams of socialism by a part of the left wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany would not lead to a brighter future.
Back to the implosion of Schulz: Even in the televised duel with the chancellor, Schulz was not in attack mode and repeatedly agreed with Merkel. He did not look like a serious contender at all but rather like Merkel’s junior partner. Only in the evening after the lost election, on TV with the other German party leaders, Martin Schulz frontally attacked Merkel and clearly said that his party would remain in the opposition, pulling out of the grand coalition — which was not so grand anymore, having lost roughly 13.8% of the vote, but still controlling a 53.4% majority in the Bundestag.
That decision was welcomed by SPD voters. They thought that another grand coalition with Merkel would further reduce the size of the Social Democratic Party in the next election. It was coherent in the sense that Schulz had repeatedly said during the campaign that he wanted to become chancellor himself and ruled out to serve in a cabinet under Merkel. The general assumption was that Merkel would form a so-called Jamaica coalition together with the Green Party and the economically liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
When the FDP pulled out of the coalition talks, there was a new situation. Schulz and the SPD were forced to reverse gear and enter coalition talks with Merkel’s CDU and their Bavarian sister party CSU. The whole thing did and does not look very credible. Schulz himself looked even less convincing when he stated that he wanted to become Germany’s next minister of foreign affairs. That was another total reversal of his original position. One reversal too many for the party base as well as some other party leaders. The general uproar forced Schulz to accept not to serve in the next grand coalition.
The story is not over yet. Yes, CDU, CSU and SPD agreed on a coalition treaty. However, the roughly 464,000 party members who were accepted as SPD party members before February 6, 2018 before 18:00 will have the final word on the coalition treaty and, therefore, on the formation of another grand coalition.
Two interesting facts about the upcoming SPD vote: SPD members can be teenagers who have completed their 14th year. They do not need to have reached the age of majority — 18 in Germany — as requested in the parliamentary election. SPD voters don’t even need to have German citizenship!
As for the SPD’s fresh start with Andrea Nahles, it looks not so great. The SPD Präsidium proposed to the SPD Vorstand to nominate Andrea Nahles as the new party leader, which the Vorstand unanimously agreed to do. This was without counting with the resistance of party members who knew the party rules. Andrea Nahles was a vocal critic of Gerhard Schröder’s reforms. She served as Federal Minister of Labor and Social Affairs in Merkel’s 2013-2017 cabinet. But she is neither a member of the Präsidium nor the Vorstand and, therefore, could not immediately become the party’s interim leader until her probable election at the party congress on April 22, 2018 in Wiesbaden. The SPD party leaders had to reverse gear once again and nominate SPD vice-president Olaf Scholz as the party’s interim leader.
One could write an entire book about the crazy 2017 election year and the turmoil affecting the SPD, CDU and CSU. These are just a few, notable remarks about the self-inflicted pain of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
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SPD leader Andrea Nahles. She only became party leader after this article was written. Photo added on February 4, 2019: Signing of the coalition agreement for the 19th election period of the Bundestag by Andrea Nahles, leader of the Social Democratic Party since April 2018. Photo: Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons / Sandro Halank.
