💎With Germany's snap elections set for Sunday, a total of four candidates are in the running for the top post of Chancellor.
🐼On the list for the next chancellors are the incumbent, the opposition leader, the current vice-chancellor, and — for the first time — a far-right party leader.
Germany Snap Elections | Who Are The Top Candidates For Chancellor?
Olaf Scholz
🦂Olaf Scholz, 66-year-old, has been Germany's chancellor since December 2021. The center-left Social Democrat has a wealth of government experience, having previously served as Hamburg's mayor and German labor and finance minister. Quickly finding himself dealing with unexpected crises, he launched an effort to modernize Germany's military after Russia invaded Ukraine and made Germany Ukraine's second-biggest weapons supplier.
🅷He also tried to prevent an energy crunch and tried to counter high inflation. But his three-party coalition became infamous for infighting and collapsed in November as it argued over how to revitalize the economy.
Friedrich Merz
ꦓGermany's 69-year-old opposition leader Friedrich Merz has been the front-runner in the election campaign, with his centre-right Union bloc leading the polls.
🍨He became the leader of his Christian Democratic Union party after longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel — a former rival — stepped down in 2021.
♊He has taken his party in a more conservative direction. During the election campaign, he made curbing irregular migration a central issue.
Robert Habeck
🥀The 55-year-old is the candidate from the environmentalist Greens party. He's also Germany's current vice chancellor and the economy and climate minister, with responsibility for energy issues.
🦂From 2018 to 2022, he co-led the Greens and helped the party grow in popularity. However, in 2021, he decided to step down and allow Annalena Baerbock, who is the foreign minister, to lead the party's first-ever bid for the chancellorship.
Alice Weidel
🤡With Weidel's contest for the top post, the 46-year-old is making the first bid from the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). An economist by nature, Weidel joined the party shortly after it was founded in 2013. Since the party first secured seats in Germany's national legislature in 2017, she has served as co-leader of her party's parliamentary group. In 2022, she became a co-leader of the party alongside Tino Chrupalla. and in December, she was nominated as the AfD's candidate for chancellor.
💦However, other parties have made it clear they won't collaborate with the AfD, so at this point, her chances of becoming chancellor are highly unlikely.
Why Is Germany Holding Snap Elections?
🗹In the country's last federal election in 2021, Scholz's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) formed a coalition with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).
ꦕThe FDP was the most junior member of the coalition, representing just 11% of the electorate. However, ex-Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the leader of the FDP, openly disagreed with Scholz and other cabinet members on multiple occasions, most notably about the government's 2025 budget.
📖On November 6, the chancellor asked President Steinmeier to dismiss Lindner, which he did the next day. The FDP The FDP pulled its support from the coalition, leaving Scholz and the Greens as a minority government.
🤪The SPD holds 207 seats in the 733-seat Bundestag, while the Greens have 117.Minority governments are frowned upon in Germany, and the collapse of a coalition is relatively rare compared to other European countries. It has only happened five times since Germany adopted its current constitution in 1949.
(With AP inputs)
