2019 Social Democratic Party of Germany leadership election

2019 Social Democratic Party of Germany leadership election

Turnout	226,775 (53.3%) (first round) 230,215 (54.1%) (second round)

The 2019 Social Democratic Party of Germany leadership election took place in the autumn of 2019 to elect the new leadership of the Social Democratic Party of Germany following the resignation of the Andrea Nahles on 3 June 2019. Although the leader(s) of the party are elected indirectly by a party convention,^[1] for the first time since 1993 the SPD held a vote by the membership to decide the candidate(s) which the party’s executive board will propose to the party convention. Though the convention is not obliged to elect the proposed candidates, the membership vote is considered politically binding.^[2]

The membership vote was held in two rounds, with the top two tickets from the first round proceeding to a runoff. In the first round held between 14 and 25 October, Olaf Scholz and Klara Geywitz placed first with 22.7% of the vote, while Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken placed second with 21.0%. In the second round, Walter-Borjans and Esken won with 53.1% of the vote to Scholz and Geywitz’s 45.3%.

This was seen as an upset victory for the left-wing of the SPD, including skeptics of the grand coalition with the CDU. Esken and Walter-Borjans were little-known to the public at large, Esken being a backbencher in the Bundestag and Walter-Borjans being the former Minister of Finance of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2010 to 2017. Scholz, a business-friendly fiscal conservative, on the other hand had the backing of much of the party establishment, including General Secretary Lars Klingbeil and several Minister-Presidents such as Stephan Weil^[3] and Hamburg First Mayor Peter Tschentscher.

In December 2019, the SPD party convention elected Walter-Borjans and Esken as the new co-leaders of the party. Though they had previously hinted an end the grand coalition with the CDU, they backed away from that, first proposing a revision of the coalition agreement. The CDU did not accept this and thus, the coalition continued.^[4]

Walter-Borjans and Esken proved to be unpopular and barely-known leaders and their parties poll numbers did not recover from the low to mid tens.^[5] In August 2020, Walter-Borjans and Esken nominated the much more popular Scholz to be their Chancellor candidate^[6] for which they were widely mocked.^[7] However, in near the end of the 2021 German federal election, Scholz’s personal popularity fueled a sudden surge of the SPD in the polls, leading to their victory and, eventually, Scholz becoming Chancellor.

Scholz’s running mate, Klara Geywitz, who had lost her seat in the Landtag of Brandenburg during the campaign and went to work for the Brandenburg Court of Audit, would later be appointed Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Building by Scholz to his cabinet.

Background[edit]

In the 2017 federal election, the SPD won just 20.5% of votes cast, its worst result in the history of the Federal Republic. Party leader Martin Schulz subsequently announced that the SPD would not renew the grand coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in which it had served since 2013. However, in November, after it became clear that there were no viable alternatives, Schulz reneged on his pledge and called an extraordinary party conference which voted to negotiate a new coalition agreement with the CDU. Schulz was subject to significant opposition and criticism from the party, and resigned as leader in February 2018. However, the coalition agreement was approved by 66.0% of the party members in a vote held later that month, and the SPD re-entered government.

Schulz proposed Andrea Nahles as his successor, and she was confirmed as the SPD’s new leader at a party convention in April 2018. Nahles quickly faced difficulties with the new government as many disputes arose over the summer of 2018, including the “asylum quarrel” and controversy around Hans-Georg Maaßen. Nahles was unable to stabilize her party as its performance in opinion polling declined to record lows, accompanied by a string of historically poor state election performances. In national polling, the SPD was overtaken by the Greens in October 2018, and the party polled around 15% through early 2019. In the 2019 European elections held on 26 May, the SPD placed third, winning only 15.8% of votes cast – the worst result for the party on a national level since 1887. Nahles came under major pressure to step down, and announced her resignation on 3 June. The party was thereafter led by acting leaders Malu Dreyer, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel and Manuela Schwesig until the party conference in December which elected the new leadership.

Procedure[edit]

Party members were permitted to declare their candidacy between 1 July and 1 September. Candidates were able to run as a sole candidate to head the party alone, or with another member on a two-person ticket to serve as co-leaders. In the latter case, at least one candidate was required to be female. Each single candidate or two-person ticket needed sufficient support from state, regional, or local SPD associations in order to run. The requirements were one state association, one regional district, or five local districts. If no candidacy receives an absolute majority of the votes cast in the first round, the two candidacies with the highest number of votes cast proceed to a second round. Both votes were to be considered invalid if less than 20% of the party membership participated. The party’s executive board was to propose the winner of the vote to the party convention which took place between 6 and 8 December.^[8]

Candidates[edit]

Candidates[edit]

	Name	Previous service	State	Announcement date	Nomination	Ref.
	Norbert Walter-Borjans Saskia Esken	Minister of Finance of North Rhine-Westphalia (2010–2017) Member of the Bundestag for Baden-Württemberg (since 2013)	North Rhine-Westphalia Baden-Württemberg	30 August 2019	Under District Aachen Under district Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis Under District Calw complete	[9][10]
	Christina Kampmann Michael Roth	North Rhine-Westphalia State Minister for Families, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport (2015–2017) Minister of state at the Federal Foreign Office (since 2018)	North Rhine-Westphalia Hesse	2 July 2019	District Hesse North complete	[11][12]
	Karl Lauterbach Nina Scheer	Member of the Bundestag (since 2005) Member of the Bundestag (since 2013)	North Rhine-Westphalia Schleswig-Holstein	12 July 2019	Under District Segeberg Under District Leverkusen Under District Stormarn Under District Duchy of Lauenburg Under District Essen complete	[13][14][15][16][17]
	Hans Wallow	Member of the Bundestag (1981–1983 and 1990–1998)	North Rhine-Westphalia	15 July 2019	pending	[18]
	Alexander Ahrens Simone Lange	Mayor of Bautzen (since 2015) Mayor of Flensburg (since 2017)	Saxony Schleswig-Holstein	2 August 2019	Under District Bautzen, Under District Schmalkalden, Under District Schwarzwald-Baar, Under District Pfaffenhofen, Under District Dithmarschen complete	[19]
	Robert Maier	Vice President of the SPD Economy-Council	Berlin	5 August 2019	pending	[20]
	Gesine Schwan Ralf Stegner	2004 and 2009 candidate for President of Germany Leader of the SPD-group in the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament (since 2008)	Brandenburg Schleswig-Holstein	14 August 2019	Under District Bremen-Nord, Under District Rosenheim-Land, Under District Frankfurt (Oder), Under District Pinneberg, Under District Rendsburg-Eckernförde complete	[21]
	Petra Köpping Boris Pistorius	Saxony State minister for Equalitiy and Integration (since 2014) Lower Saxony State minister for the Interior (since 2013)	Saxony Lower Saxony	16 August 2019	State Association Saxony, State Association Lower Saxony; District Weser-Ems, District North-Lower Saxony; Under District North Saxony, Under District Osnabrück, Under District Leipzig, Under District Hildesheim, Under District Chemnitz, Under District Leer, Under District Erzgebirge complete
	Dierk Hirschel Hilde Mattheis	Union secretary of ver.di Member of the Bundestag (since 2002)	Bavaria Baden-Württemberg	18 August 2019
	Klara Geywitz Olaf Scholz	Member of the Brandenburg state parliament (2004-2019) Vice Chancellor of Germany and Federal Minister of Finance (since 2018)	Brandenburg Brandenburg	20 August 2019	Hamburg state association complete	[22]

Individuals who have publicly expressed interest[edit]

Declined to be candidates[edit]

• Malu Dreyer, Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate (since 2013) and acting leader of the SPD
• Manuela Schwesig, Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (since 2017) and acting leader of the SPD
• Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, acting leader of the SPD
• Hubertus Heil, Federal Minister for Labour and Social affairs (since 2018)^[26]
• Stephan Weil, Minister President of Lower Saxony (since 2013)^[27]
• Anke Rehlinger, Deputy Minister President of Saarland (since 2013) and State Minister Minister for the Economy, Labour, Energy and Transport (since 2014)^[28]
• Franziska Giffey, Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (since 2018)^[29]

Opinion polling[edit]

Among members[edit]

Publication date	Polling firm	Scholz Geywitz	Lauterbach Scheer	Schwan Stegner	Köpping Pistorius	Lange Ahrens	Kampmann Roth	Esken Walter-Borjans	None/ Others
19–23 Aug 2019	Forsa	26	14	13	12	7	7	–	21
3 Oct 2019	wahlkreisprognose.de	19	5	6	20	–	23	21	6

Among officials[edit]

Publication date	Polling firm	Scholz Geywitz	Lauterbach Scheer	Schwan Stegner	Köpping Pistorius	Lange Ahrens	Kampmann Roth	None/ Others
19–23 Aug 2019	Forsa	22	13	13	15	11	10	16

Among voters[edit]

Publication date	Polling firm	Scholz Geywitz	Lauterbach Scheer	Schwan Stegner	Köpping Pistorius	Lange Ahrens	Kampmann Roth	Esken Walter-Borjans	None/ Others
26–28 Oct 2019	Civey	35.4	–	–	–	–	–	54.2	10.4
5–11 Sep 2019	Civey	23.3	11.0	11.7	14.4	–	6.9	14.0	18.7

Results[edit]

Summary of the 2019 Social Democratic Party of Germany leadership election

Candidates		1st round		2nd round
		Votes	%	Votes	%
	Olaf Scholz & Klara Geywitz	48,473	22.68	98,246	45.33
	Norbert Walter-Borjans & Saskia Esken	44,967	21.04	114,995	53.06
	Christina Kampmann & Michael Roth	34,793	16.28
	Nina Scheer & Karl Lauterbach	31,271	14.63
	Petra Köpping & Boris Pistorius	31,230	14.41
	Gesine Schwan & Ralf Stegner	20,583	9.63
Voting members		425,630	100.0	425,630	100.0
Total votes		226,775	53.28	230,215	54.09
Abstentions		2,376	1.11	3,480	1.60
Permitted votes		214,956	?	217,175	?
Valid votes		213,693	?	216,721	?
Invalid/blank votes		1,263	?	454	?
1st round results – Click here  · 2nd round results – Click here

References[edit]