Could Germany’s Social Democrats be poised for a surprise election victory?

Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) have pulled ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for the first time in 15 years, according to an opinion poll published just a month before the country’s federal election.

The election, which will be marked by Merkel standing down as chancellor after 16 years in office and four election victories, will take place on 26 September and has seen the CDU split “over the direction of the party”, Euronews said.

However, the spike in support for the SPD has nonetheless surprised commentators, with “an ageing membership” and a leader “with all the charisma of a middle-ranking bank clerk” culminating in the party experiencing a “humiliating descent from national institution to electoral also-rans” in recent years, The Guardian added.

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Olaf-ing stock

Support for Merkel’s CDU, as well as its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU), “has been falling steadily in recent weeks”, Euronews said.

Some blamed the drop in support on the party’s candidate for chancellor, Armin Laschet, who has failed to match Merkel’s popularity and “whose ratings have tumbled since he was caught on camera laughing during a visit last month to a town hit by floods”.

According to polling for broadcaster RTL, the SPD is up two percentage points compared to a week ago on 23%, while the CDU/CSU slipped a point to 22%. The Greens, who had hoped to snatch the chancellorship for the first time, were down a point at 18%.

The poll marks “the first time that the SPD had been ahead of the CDU/CSU since October 2006” and also represents the CDU’s lowest popularity rating since 1984 when Forsa, the polling institute behind the survey, was founded, Euronews said.

Ahead of next month’s vote, “the obituary of the SPD had already been written”, wrote The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent Philip Oltermann. Like many social democratic parties across Europe, the party has seen a gradual fall in support during Merkel’s spell in the top job, however, it is now “enjoying a surge of energy as its rivals start to lag”.

Led by Olaf Scholz, who has served as minister of finance and vice-chancellor since 2018, the SPD’s campaign is “running more smoothly than many expected”, Oltermann continued, adding that the politician “once nicknamed ‘Scholzomat’ for his monotone delivery” has barely “put a foot wrong” during his pitch for the chancellorship.

The CDU had “appeared on course for an easy victory until last month”, The Telegraph said, but will be alarmed by the polling results that suggest the SPD could be “on course to pull off a stunning victory and seize control of the chancellery”.

The SPD, however, may be “relying on Scholz” to propel them to victory as the party leader – who was selected from the right of the party – “consistently outpolls his rivals when Germans are asked who they would vote for if Germany had a US-style presidential system, and is more popular than his party”.

Comeback kid

A victory would mark a political revival for Scholz, who ran for the SPD leadership in 2019 only to be defeated by two candidates from the left. However, the victory of Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, the joint leaders who defeated Scholz, saw the party drop in the polls culminating in the pair standing down ahead of this year’s election.

A career politicians, Scholz is “seen by many Germans as a steady pair of hands with a track record as finance minister, and someone who will not embarrass the country”, The Telegraph said, a characterisation that places him in stark contrast to Laschet following number of unforced errors on the campaign trail.

He has also “adopted a policy favoured by the traditional left as one of the benchmark promises of his campaign”, The Guardian’s Oltermann noted, namely raising the minimum hourly wage from €9.50 to €12 (£10.30) within a year of winning the election.

“The traditional pitch of Scholz’s centrist wing was to redefine social justice as social mobility,” Anke Hassel, a professor of public policy at the Hertie School in Berlin, told the paper. “The SPD’s current pitch is more conciliatory: we’ll make sure that those who can’t move up won’t be left out in the cold.”

However, to “emerge as the direct or indirect winner after the vote” next month, Scholz will “need to convince swing voters that he not only cares for the left-behind but also understands the needs of Europe’s largest economy”, Oltermann said.

“Scholz may be more up to that job than his rival”, he added, meaning he may be on course to win the chancellery back from Merkel’s CDU for the first time since she assumed the role.