Polls Indicate Scholz’s Potential Defeat in Germany’s Impending Snap Election
Germany is facing snap elections in February, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party trailing far behind the center-right CDU/CSU and AfD, dealing with a struggling economy in the process.
Germany is set to hold snap elections in February; however, early polls suggest Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party will be defeated.
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Scholz’s three-way alliance comprising his center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the left-wing eco party Greens, and the center-right Free Democratic Party (FDP) faced increasing pressure as it struggled over disputes about economic priorities.
Europe’s largest economy is facing its second year of contraction, grappling with the end of affordable Russian gas and historic Volkswagen factory closures as it struggles to compete with lower-cost Chinese electric vehicles.
Polls
Early polls suggest Scholz’s party could be defeated in a snap election.
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The Greens hold 11 percent; the left-wing nationalist, populist, Eurosceptic, and socially conservative party Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is at 5 percent; the FDP is at 4 percent; and the left-wing Die Linke stands at 3 percent.
“Now it’s about experience and competence and I am sure that Olaf Scholz is the right candidate,” SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Muetzenich told reporters.
Scholz conveys “trust, competence, experience, but at the same time also the necessary emotions,” he said.
AfD
In September, in the state of Brandenburg, Scholz’s SPD narrowly defeated the right-wing AfD, receiving 30.9 percent of the vote compared with the AfD’s 29.2 percent.
Although the AfD did not replicate its historic win in neighboring Thuringia, the party’s anti-immigration stance, skepticism of net-zero policies, and opposition to the Russia–Ukraine war continue to resonate with a significant portion of voters.
Scholz has urged other parties to block the AfD from governing.
AfD leaders have called for strict border controls and a reduction in illegal immigrants. The party has also pushed for preserving what it sees as traditional German culture and says that “Islam does not belong to Germany.”
The policies also include opposition to climate action agendas and critiques of European Union integration.
Complicated
Richard Schenk, a research fellow at the think tank MCC Brussels, previously told The Epoch Times that snap elections are complicated in Germany and cannot be called immediately.
Schenk said that it’s possible that the CDU, FDP, and AfD could hold a minority in Parliament together.
However, he said that conservatives are very afraid of this minority government situation, as the AfD is going to bring forward proposals for economic policy that are “out of the CDU and FDP playbook.”
“Then [the CDU] would either have to maintain this firewall, this cordon sanitaire, and basically refuse their own proposals, or they would have to accept the AfD proposals,” he said.
“There is a very interesting constitutional provision in the German constitution, exactly for this case, which would allow … basically for the government to bypass the Parliament and only pass legislation with the upper chamber, the Federal Council.
“But nobody ever has triggered this ‘nuclear option.’”
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
