A disastrous end to the year is followed by a discouraging start to 2024: Olaf Scholz’s reputation is so badly damaged that his re-election chances are dwindling rapidly. He only has the current year left to reverse the trend – but there is no indication that he could succeed in doing so.
Olaf Scholz began his last full year in government with a justification: “I have never experienced it all in such a concentrated manner, in such rapid succession,” many people said to him about the dense succession of crises, the Chancellor reported in his New Year’s speech. In the following, Scholz once again explained how well Germany had come through Corona, wars and the energy price crisis. The subtext: “also thanks to my government”. It’s safe to say that things didn’t get much worse the Traffic light success story. Scholz and his government members have been reciting it like a mantra for months. But that doesn’t convince people: the coalition’s reputation is in ruins, and dissatisfaction with the Chancellor is at historic proportions.
It is undisputed that the challenges for Scholz’s troops were great from day one and the time in government flew by. With the start of the second half of its legislative period, the traffic lights are already entering the home straight, because after 2024 the coalition will no longer be able to achieve anything significant. No law passed in the 2025 election year will have a noticeable effect on the overall economic situation on the day of the federal election. In addition, the approaching election campaign will overshadow all governance from spring 2025 at the latest. If Scholz wants to turn things around for himself and his SPD, he will have to do it in the twelve months of this year. The problem: These could be even more difficult than the first two years of the government.
No feel-good date in the calendar
Not only is there a very difficult European election coming up on June 9th, but Scholz’s SPD is also threatened with painful losses in the local elections in eight federal states on the same day. On September 1st, the Social Democrats could be kicked out of the Saxon state parliament, while the AfD is likely to become the strongest political force there and in neighboring Thuringia. Three weeks later, SPD Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke could lose his office or at least the opportunity to form a stable government in the state elections in Brandenburg. In the second half of 2024, Hungary, ruled by Putin’s buddy Viktor Orbán, is set to take over the EU Council Presidency, while the USA is heading for a second presidency of the (at best) unpredictable Donald Trump.
However, Scholz does not find highlights that serve to promote himself, such as the 2022 G7 summit in Elmau, Bavaria, in his annual preview. To make matters worse, negotiations on the 2025 budget are still pending. The 2024 budget almost broke up the coalition in December. The negotiations that follow will not be any easier. Meanwhile, the prospects for Ukraine in the war with Russia have only gotten worse for months, the Middle East is a powder keg surrounded by torchbearers, and this year is also sure to bring some kind of catastrophe that no one can yet foresee. Meanwhile, the German economy is suffering and is disproportionately dependent on the development of China – and there, too, the indicators are pointing downwards in case of doubt.
The impression: “You can’t do it”
These are the framework conditions under which Scholz wants to achieve the major turnaround and he is entering this fight with his authority damaged to the maximum: His fall in the polls is not just an expression of general uncertainty or dissatisfaction with the constant conflicts between the three coalition partners. With the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling on the government’s shadow budgets and the subsequent impasse over the adjusted budgets for 2023, 2024 and 2025, Scholz lost his last pound: the reputation of a fundamentally serious expert.
The coalition was so clumsy in drawing up the budget that even real successes were forgotten. Even with the heating law, when Scholz failed to show any visible leadership in the dispute between the FDP and the Greens, many people had the impression: “They can’t do it.” This narrative has become entrenched with the budget crisis, perhaps irreversibly. The fact that the coalition underestimated farmers’ frustration in its austerity efforts fits into this picture.
The SPD has alternatives to Scholz
But as if they were living in a parallel world, the Social Democrats defiantly cheered their chancellor and their own ministerial team at their most recent federal party conference in early December. Still traumatized by years of nasty strife, the SPD remains firmly united. After the miraculous victory in 2021, people firmly believe that a federal election will only be decided in the last few meters – i.e. in the last few weeks. That’s not wrong. Even in 2025, all sorts of events could lead to a reassessment of Scholz’s government balance sheet. A Union collapsed over the candidacy for chancellor or Friedrich Merz’s failed election campaign, a sudden economic upswing that cannot be foreseen today, relief at an end to violence in Ukraine or even just a little more confidence after a successful European Football Championship in your own country: in theory, a lot is possible.
But Scholz cannot rely on his party actually holding its nerve in the hope of such developments until the summer of the federal elections. If in a year the poll numbers remain bad or worse, the comrades could remember the true nature of their relationship with Olaf Scholz: a love of convenience based on (the Chancellor’s favorite word) respect, but which lacks any passion or deeper connection . This admission would widen the Social Democrats’ perspective not only on the seriousness of the situation, but also on the alternatives to the incumbent.
The SPD has candidates in its ranks who continue to radiate competence, experience and the will to lead. And they also bring with them what Scholz is sorely missing from SPD members: a certain warmth of heart and understandable language. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil are such candidates. The SPD chairman and architect of the 2021 election victory, Lars Klingbeil, could at some point be forced to drop Scholz for the good of the party. So it will be worth keeping an eye on these three gentlemen from Lower Saxony in the remaining eleven and a half months, while the Chancellor is not going into his last battle – but a decisive one.