The Economist’s statistical model finds a 33% chance that the Social Democrats will take first place in the election on September 26th. Two weeks ago the number was just 1%
THE CROWD at the UfaFabrik, a cultural centre in Berlin, cheers as the moderator reveals a new opinion poll: Germany’s Social Democrats have overtaken the Green Party for the first time in a year. It falls to Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister and the SPD’s candidate for the chancellery, to calm his own supporters. It’s election day that counts, he says, before proceeding to a sober discussion of Afghanistan and other themes.
The SPD’s travails once seemed boundless. After slumping to 20% of the vote at the previous election, in 2017, the party reluctantly agreed to continue propping up the CDU/CSU in government. Mr Kühnert’s campaign to return to opposition looked vindicated as the SPD’s support dipped further. In 2019 Mr Scholz’s bid to run the party was thwarted by two obscure members of its left wing.
For all that, the SPD is polling only a bit above its score in 2017, a result so miserable it triggered mass soul-searching and a formal inquiry. The bigger story is a fragmented electorate and the deepening woes of the SPD’s rivals. After a brief bump in the spring the Greens have reverted to a level that disappoints those who dreamed of the chancellery, even though it would still mark a doubling of their result in 2017.
Mr Scholz’s record has its blots, including mismanagement of riots during a G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017 and a brace of tax and regulatory scandals on his watch. But these blemishes seem either too distant or too complex to stir voters’ concerns. And unlike both Mr Laschet and Annalena Baerbock, the Greens’ chancellor-candidate, Mr Scholz has not put a foot wrong during the campaign.
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