German left begins election campaign

Chancellor Olaf Scholz launches campaign and promises to turn the tide, accusing allies of sabotage in his fight for re-election!

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told his party on Saturday that February’s general election will mark a crucial decision for the country’s future.

Despite poor poll performance for their center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Scholz and party leader Lars Klingbeil have vowed that the SPD will turn things around.

What the party leadership said
“There is a lot at stake,” said Scholz, the SPD candidate for chancellorship in the likely election.

“We are facing a fundamental decision for our country, one way or another,” he told the audience at the event at the party headquarters in Berlin. “Now it’s about everything. If we make the wrong choice in Germany now, in this situation, it will have serious consequences.”

Also speaking at the opening of a campaign conference at SPD headquarters in Berlin, party leader Lars Klingbeil was optimistic about the party’s prospects.

“The Social Democrats are united, but, above all, the Social Democrats are highly motivated for this election campaign,” he said.

“85 days, it’s going to be a difficult journey. It will challenge us,” Klingbeil added, referring to what promises to be a tense run-up to early parliamentary elections scheduled for February 23.

“If there’s one thing the SPD knows how to do, it’s fight: we are a party of recovery and we will show that over the next 85 days,” said Klingbeil.

What the research says so far

According to one poll, Scholz was clearly gaining ground in terms of voter approval over his challenger Friedrich Merz, the chancellorship candidate of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU).

In the survey published on Saturday by the opinion research institute Insa, commissioned by the newspaper Bild, 22% of those interviewed said they would vote directly for Scholz for chancellor, if that option existed in Germany.

The number represents an increase of 7 percentage points compared to the previous week. However, 30% still said they would vote for Merz. Meanwhile, 16% said they would choose the Greens’ Robert Habeck — a slight drop from last week.

Scholz’s three-party coalition government collapsed after he fired former Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the pro-business Liberals (FDP) in early November following months of sharp disagreements over budget plans for 2025.

As a result, the FDP withdrew from the government, reducing Scholz’s coalition to a minority government with the Greens.

Scholz began his speech with attacks on Lindner, saying the FDP leader and the party had “systematically sabotaged” the government’s work for months.

“They actively wanted to prevent this federal government from being successful,” Scholz said. “Something like this can never happen again in Germany.”

With information from dpa, AFP and Reuters*