SPD Chatter

We are now roughly ten days away from the SPD Party of Germany finally selecting it's new Chancellor-candidate and it's party-chief (it'll be divided duty).

To lay out this troublesome episode....the SPD Party was known for decades as the common-workingman's party.  They could walk into a national election and expect to take 35-to-45 percent of the vote.  Between the CDU and SPD numbers....they could take 80-to-90 percent of the public vote.

Then in the early 1990s....things shifted.  As each election came around, the CDU-SPD total number drifted downward.  In this least election (2017), they managed between 50 and 55 percent of the total vote.

Personality clashes occurred after the 2017 election within the SPD Party and today, they rest at around 16-percent of the general public polling efforts.

Since early summer, they've had a temp team of three individuals running the party, and folks will go to admit that no one has really noticed a problem with the temp team.

During this period of four months, a series of new bosses have campaigned, and we are down to the final two groups.  The chief candidate for the Chancellor candidate is Scholz (the current Finance Minister, and former mayor of Hamburg).  Opposing him is Geywitz, who is lesser known, but impressed people with his chatter on the SPD future.

The chief problem with Scholz?  I would go and suggest that his approach is mostly that of an administrator, and not of an executive.  If you were waiting for enthusiastic speeches....you won't be happy.  His period as mayor of Hamburg?  It's during the riots of the G-7 Conference of 2017, and a fair number of locals blame him for lack of authority.  He can lay this back onto the police, and the decision to hold the conference in Hamburg. 

As for this settling the SPD problems?  There's no indicator that a plus-up will occur.  The Greens appear to have secured a fair number of ex-SPD voters and will continue to move ahead.  I would suggest that the SPD has serious problems in being a major national party, and that the Greens are now the true opposition party to Merkel's CDU Party. 

The fact that the only election for the next year is in Hamburg?  Well, this is a big positive for the SPD to rebuild upon their strength (they ought to get 30 to 35 percent in that regional election).  But countering that, if you use recent polling in Hamburg....the Greens are 25-percent or more, and will easily get second-place.