This archive report was first published on 30 November 2019.
On November 30, 2019, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is set to announce the results of its leadership election, with Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and his running mate Klara Geywitz facing off against challengers Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans.
The leadership election was triggered by the departure of the SPD's previous leader, Andrea Nahles, after the party's poor showing in European Parliament elections.
According to the latest opinion polls, the SPD, which came second in the 2017 federal election, is vying for third place with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), behind the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Greens.
Victory for Scholz and Geywitz would be a relief for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been in power for 14 years and plans to stay on until the end of her mandate in 2021.
However, critics argue that the SPD's problems will not be resolved while the party is "in a bad state", according to an editorial in the Spiegel weekly.
"The SPD offers no long-term political direction on the way in which it wants the society of tomorrow to function... on what the world of work will look like," said Gero Neugebauer, a researcher at the Free University of Berlin.
