GERMAN President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved parliament and set the country’s snap election for February 23, formally endorsing a timetable proposed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz after he pulled the plug on his ruling coalition last month. Social Democrat Scholz ended his three-party alliance with the Greens and Free Democrats when he sacked FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner in a dispute over government borrowing.
The surprise move deprived Scholz of a majority in the lower house, or Bundestag, and paved the way for a national ballot seven months before the scheduled end of his four-year term. With just under two months until the vote, the main opposition conservatives under Friedrich Merz are strides ahead in the polls. Scholz’s SPD is languishing in third place behind the far-right Alternative for Germany party, with the Greens in fourth. Merz’s center-right CDU/CSU bloc has about 31 percent support, according to the latest Bloomberg polling average, with the AfD at around 19 percent and the center-left SPD 16 percent. The Greens have about 13 percent, while Lindner’s FDP is in danger of missing the 5 percent threshold for getting into parliament with 4 percent. Lars Klingbeil, an SPD co-leader, said he expects the party to begin narrowing the gap to the conservatives in January and still believes it can emerge as the strongest party again. At the last election in 2021, the SPD came from behind in the final weeks of campaigning to secure almost 26 percent in first place, beating the CDU/CSU, which got 24 percent. “More and more citizens will ask themselves: Do we want Olaf Scholz as chancellor or Friedrich Merz?” Klingbeil was quoted as saying in an interview with Tagesspiegel newspaper published Thursday. “We have the better candidate, the better team, the better program.” Although Steinmeier has formally dissolved the Bundestag, its term will only end with the constitution of the next parliament
GERMANY ELECTION COALITION SCHOLZ MERZ
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