Germany SPD party conference confirms Scholz as candidate for chancellor
At its party conference in Berlin, the SPD has confirmed Chancellor Olaf Scholz as its candidate for the Bundestag elections on February 23. There were only a few dissenting votes in the vote by show of hands.
11.01.2025, 14:49
SDA
Scholz had only been nominated as candidate for Chancellor by the party executive at the end of November after a tough and controversial debate. Prior to this, the party had spent two weeks publicly discussing whether the much more popular Defense Minister Boris Pistorius should not be substituted as a replacement candidate for Scholz, who had suffered after the failure of his coalition government.
Unlike his first candidacy for chancellor in 2021, Scholz was not elected by secret ballot this time. The party leadership justified this with the fact that Scholz is now running as chancellor and not as a challenger and that it is customary in such cases to decide "by acclamation". In 2021, 96.2% of delegates voted for him in a secret online vote during the coronavirus pandemic.
