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      German Election Heralds Messier Politics and Weaker Leadership After Merkel

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      Preliminary results indicated an outcome so tight that it could take months of talks to form a new government at a critical moment for Europe.BERLIN — After 16 years of Angela Merkel as their chancellor, Germans scattered their votes across the political spectrum on Sunday in the election to replace her, a fractured return that heralds a messier political era in Germany and weaker German leadership in Europe.Preliminary official results gave the center-left Social Democrats a lead of 1.6 percentage points, an outcome so close that no one could yet say who the next chancellor would be nor what the next government would look like.The only thing that seemed clear was that it would take weeks if not months of haggling to form a coalition, leaving Europe’s biggest democracy suspended in a kind of limbo at a critical moment when the continent is still struggling to recover from the pandemic and France — Germany’s partner at the core of Europe — faces divisive elections of its own next spring.Sunday’s election signaled the end of an era for Germany and for Europe. For over a decade, Ms. Merkel was not just chancellor of Germany but effectively the leader of Europe. She steered her country and the continent through successive crises and in the process helped Germany become Europe’s leading power for the first time since two world wars.Her time in office was characterized above all by stability. Her center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union, has governed in Germany for 52 of the 72 postwar years, traditionally with one smaller party. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany clenching her hands as she listened to speeches on Sunday at her party headquarters in Berlin after parliamentary elections.Markus Schreiber/Associated PressBut the campaign proved to be the most volatile in decades. Armin Laschet, the candidate of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, was long seen as the front-runner until a series of blunders compounded by his own unpopularity eroded his party’s lead. Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic candidate, was counted out altogether before his steady persona led his party to a spectacular 10-point comeback. And the Greens, who briefly led the polls early on, fell short of expectations but recorded their best result ever.On Sunday, the Christian Democrats’ share of the vote collapsed well below 30 percent, heading toward the worst showing in their history. For the first time since the 1950s, at least three parties will be needed to form a coalition — and both main parties are planning to hold competing talks to do so.“It’s so unprecedented that it’s not even clear who talks with whom on whose invitation about what, because the Constitution does not have guardrails for a situation like that,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the Berlin-based vice president of the German Marshall Fund, a research group.Even before the first official returns were announced, the battle lines were drawn as both main contenders to succeed Ms. Merkel as chancellor announced their claims to the top job — and their intention to fight for it. A long tradition of deferential, consensus-driven politics was quickly evaporating, giving way to a more raucous tone.At the headquarters of the Social Democrats in Berlin, loud cheering erupted when the first exit polls were announced. “The S.P.D. is back!” Lars Klingbeil, the party’s general secretary, told the crowd of party members, before Mr. Scholz took the stage with his wife and insisted “that the next chancellor is called Olaf Scholz.”Across town, at the conservative headquarters, Mr. Laschet, the candidate of Ms. Merkel’s party, made clear who he thought the next chancellor should be, saying, “We will do everything to form a government.”The unpopularity of Armin Laschet, the Christian Democratic Union candidate, appears to have dragged the party down.Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersIt is a messy set of circumstances likely to complicate the negotiations to form a government. And whoever ends up being chancellor will have not just a weaker mandate — but less time to spend on leading in Europe, analysts said.“Germany will be absent in Europe for a while,” said Andrea Römmele, dean of the Hertie School in Berlin. “And whoever becomes chancellor is likely to be a lot more distracted by domestic politics.”The election’s outcome gives significant leverage to the two smaller parties that are almost certain to be part of any new government: the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. Courted by both Mr. Scholz and Mr. Laschet, they have signaled they will first talk among themselves.“Two Maybe-Chancellors and Two Kingmakers,” read one headline of the German public broadcaster ARD.The murky outcome made for a tense night of election-watching in the Pankow district of Berlin. Lena Mucha for The New York TimesIn one way Sunday’s returns were an expression of how disoriented voters are by the departure of Ms. Merkel, who is leaving office as the most popular politician in her country.The chancellor oversaw a golden decade for Europe’s largest economy, which expanded by more than a fifth, pushing unemployment to the lowest levels since the 1980s.As the United States was distracted by multiple wars, Britain gambled its future on a referendum to leave the European Union and France failed to reform itself, Ms. Merkel’s Germany was mostly a haven of stability.“She was the steady hand at the helm, the steady presence,” said Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund.“Now there is an uneasiness about what comes next,” he said. “The presence and reputation of this chancellor is outsized and very hard to emulate.”That explains why both main candidates to succeed her mostly ran on platforms of continuity rather than change, attempting where possible to signal they would be the one most like the departing chancellor.“This election campaign was basically a contest for who could be the most Merkel-like,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said.Even Mr. Scholz, whose center-left party is the traditional opposition party to Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, played up his role as finance minister in the departing government rather than his own party’s sensibilities, which are well to the left of his own.Inside a polling station, a gym at a secondary school in Berlin Neukölln on Sunday morning.Lena Mucha for The New York Times“Stability, not change, was his promise,” said Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff. The distinctive political tradition of the Federal Republic of Germany is change through consensus.In the four decades it was split from the Communist East, West Germany had strong governments, traditionally formed by one of the two larger parties teaming up with a smaller partner or, in rare circumstances, the two big parties forming a grand coalition. This tradition was continued after reunification in 1990, with far-reaching changes — like the labor market reforms of the early 2000s — often carried out with support from across the aisle.But four parties have become seven and the two traditional main parties have shrunk, changing the arithmetic of forming a government that represents more than 50 percent of the vote. In the future, analysts say, three or four, not two, parties, will have to find enough common ground to govern together.Some analysts say this increasing fragmentation of Germany’s political landscape has the potential to revitalize politics by bringing more voices into the public debate. But it will no doubt make governing harder, as Germany becomes more like other countries in Europe — among them, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands — that have seen a similar fracturing. And messier politics could make the next chancellor weaker.Ms. Merkel has embodied the tradition of consensus more than perhaps any of her predecessors. Of her four terms in office, she spent three in a grand coalition with her party’s traditional opponents, the Social Democrats. When he took the stage at S.P.D. headquarters on Sunday evening, Olaf Scholz insisted “that the next chancellor is called Olaf Scholz.” Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesGoverning as Ms. Merkel’s junior partners almost killed the Social Democrats, Germany’s oldest party, stripping it of its identity and its place as the leading voice of center-left opposition. But Mr. Scholz used his cozy relationship with the chancellor to his advantage, effectively running as an incumbent in a race without one.At party headquarters on Sunday night, he was being celebrated as a savior by party members who were adamant that the chancellery was theirs.“The S.P.D. is the winner here,” insisted Karsten Hayde, a longtime party member, while Ernst-Ingo Lind, who works for a parliamentarian, said that only a year ago, he would “not have dreamed of being here.”Among the parties represented in the next German Parliament is the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which shocked the nation four years ago by becoming the first far-right party to win seats there since World War II. Its vote share slipped to 10.5 percent from almost 13 percent in 2017 and it will no longer be the country’s main opposition party. But it solidified its status as a permanent force to be reckoned with. In two states in the former Communist East it came first.“We are here to stay, and we showed that today,” Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of the party, told party members gathered on the outskirts of Berlin.For all the messiness of this election and Merkel nostalgia, many Germans took heart from the fact that more than eight in 10 voters had cast their ballots for a centrist party and that turnout was high.Early-morning voters in Munich. In a sign that the closest election in years had mobilized voters, turnout was expected to surpass the 76 percent recorded in 2017, when the last national elections were held.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesThe mobilization was palpable outside several polling stations in Berlin, where families patiently waited their turn in long lines.“It’s the beginning of a new era,” said Ms. Römmele of the Hertie School. Christopher F. Schuetze, Jack Ewing and Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin. More

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      So Organized It's Chaos: A Guide on Germany's Vote

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      It has been said that Germans are sometimes so organized that chaos reigns. Germany’s election system is no exception. It is so complex that even many Germans don’t understand it.Here’s a brief primer.Are voters choosing a chancellor today?Not exactly. Unlike in the United States, voters don’t directly elect their head of government. Rather, they vote for representatives in Parliament, who will choose the next chancellor, but only after forming a government. More on that later.The major parties declare who they would choose for chancellor, so Germans going to the polls today know who they are in effect voting for. This year the candidates most likely to become chancellor are Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats or Armin Laschet of the Christian Democrats. Annalena Baerbock, a Green, has an outside chance.Who can vote?Any German citizen 18 or over. They don’t need to register beforehand.How are seats in Parliament allocated?Everyone going to the polls today has two votes. The first vote is for a candidate to be the district’s local representative. The second vote is for a party. Voters can split their votes among parties and often do. For example, a person could cast one vote for a Social Democrat as the local member of Parliament, and a second vote for the Christian Democrats as a party.Parliament has 598 members, but could wind up with many more because of a quirk in the system. The top vote-getter in every district automatically gets a seat in Parliament. These candidates account for half of the members of Parliament. The remaining seats are allocated according to how many second votes each party receives.But parties may be allocated additional seats according to a formula designed to ensure that every faction in Parliament has a delegation that accurately reflects its national support. So Parliament could easily wind up with 700 members.Also: A party that polls less than 5 percent doesn’t get any seats at all.What happens next?It is very unlikely that any party will wind up with a majority in Parliament. The party that gets the most votes must then try to form a government by agreeing to a coalition with other parties. That has become mathematically more difficult because of the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party and the far-left Linke party.The mainstream parties have ruled out coalitions with either of those parties because of their extreme positions. But it will be a struggle for the remaining parties to find enough common ground to cobble together a majority. The process could take months. More

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      Merkel Campaigns for Laschet Days Before German Elections

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      The race for chancellor is tightening, but Angela Merkel says Armin Laschet is the man to fill her shoes.STRALSUND, Germany — Only days before Germans cast their ballots for a new Parliament and with it a new government and leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel was on the campaign trail this week — further proof that her conservatives are in a perilous position.Ms. Merkel, of course, is no longer a candidate. She is stepping down and had hoped to stay away from the race. But instead she spent Tuesday in her own district stumping for the struggling candidate for her Christian Democratic Union, Armin Laschet. She even quipped about her smaller-than-average shoe size, hoping to convince voters that those shoes are best filled by Mr. Laschet.For weeks, polls have shown a lead for the Social Democratic Party, traditional rivals of the conservative Christian Democrats yet also their governing partners. But in the final week before Sunday’s vote, the conservatives have narrowed the gap to roughly three percentage points.The Christian Democrats are Germany’s largest political party and for decades have been the country’s most dominant political force. Despite their current second-place situation, they have a reputation for being strong closers, which is giving Mr. Laschet hope after an underwhelming campaign. The Green party, the unexpected early leaders in the race, are in third place at the moment.The Social Democrats are running one of their strongest election campaign in years, marked by clear messaging on progressive issues from increasing the minimum wage to creating more affordable housing. And their front-runner candidate, Olaf Scholz, has been selling himself as the best fit for Ms. Merkel’s shoes.The Social Democratic candidate Olaf Scholz during a campaign event this month in Munich.Andreas Gebert/Reuters“Social democracy is back,” said Andrea Römmele, dean of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.For years, the Social Democrats were the forgotten junior partner in the government, and Ms. Merkel often managed to win praise for ideas that they actually put forward, such as introducing a national minimum wage and allowing same-sex marriage.“In this election, the S.P.D. has succeeded in talking about their achievements while in government and to get credit for it,” Ms. Römmele said.A lack of a strong narrative has been one of the biggest problems nagging Mr. Laschet, who is the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia and leader of the Christian Democratic Union. His campaign has been marred by blunders that have led critics to question his professionalism and ability to lead.This week, he came under criticism again. On Tuesday, he released a new campaign video in which he is seen trying to calmly deal with a well-known anti-vaccine protester. But if he hoped the ad would show his diplomatic skills, it instead brought criticism of poor taste, because it was released days after a coronavirus denier shot and killed a 20-year-old gas station attendant who refused the man service because he did not wear a mask.Speaking to the several hundred people who had gathered late Tuesday on the wet cobblestones of the Old Market Square in this city on the Baltic Sea coast, which Ms. Merkel has represented since 1990, Mr. Laschet honored the victim, then chided the several dozen anti-vaccine demonstrators who had shown up to protest the government with shouts and whistles.“We do not want this violence,” he said. But neither his condemnation nor his pledge to increase security elicited much applause. He also didn’t manage to silence the noise beyond the barriers.Ms. Merkel and Mr. Laschet on Tuesday in Stralsund.John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe rally was meant to shore up support for Mr. Laschet, but for townspeople and tourists alike, it turned into an opportunity to catch a last glimpse of the woman whose outsize role in their country and in Europe has influenced their lives since November 2005.Christine Braun, a member of the Christian Democrats in Stralsund, said that Mr. Laschet would be getting her vote, but he was not the reason she was standing in the driving rain on a chilly September night.“I came to honor Ms. Merkel, our chancellor and representative,” she said, adding that throughout her 30 years representing the constituency, Ms. Merkel would visit regularly, attending meetings and engaging with the community. “She remained approachable and down-to-earth.”Vilana Cassing and Tim Taugnitz, both students in their early 20s, were vacationing in Stralsund and saw the posters advertising the event and Ms. Merkel’s attendance. They decided to attend more out of curiosity to see the woman who had shaped their lives than out of political interest.They described their political leanings as “leftist-Green,” saying they would vote on Sunday, but not for Mr. Laschet.“I think it is good if the Christian Democrats go into opposition,” Mr. Taugnitz said.That could happen. On Sunday, voters will go to the polls, though many may have already done so, with the pandemic resulting in an unusually high number of requests for mail-in ballots — a form of voting that has been around in Germany since 1957 and that organizers assure is safe.Should the Social Democrats emerge as the strongest party, they would still need to find at least one partner to form a government. While that means that the roles could be reversed, with the Christian Democrats as the junior partners under Mr. Scholz, more likely is a center-left alliance led by the Social Democrats together with the Greens and the business friendly Free Democrats.Campaign posters this month in Berlin showing the top candidates for chancellor: Annalena Baerbock, Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesMr. Laschet has been warning against the threat posed by such an alliance, seeking to paint the other parties as a danger to the prosperity that Germans have enjoyed under Ms. Merkel.“It’s completely wrong what the S.P.D. and the Left and the Greens are planning,” Mr. Laschet told the crowd on Tuesday, referring to pledges to increase taxes on the country’s highest earners. “They should invest and create jobs.”Ms. Merkel instead sought to praise Mr. Laschet and Georg Günther, who hopes to win the seat in Parliament that she is vacating after 30 years, for their achievements. She expressed confidence that both men would continue the course that she had set and urged her supporters to back them.“Several times today I have reported my shoe size,” Ms. Merkel told the crowd in Stralsund. Nodding to Mr. Günther and smiling, she said that he could “manage” to fill her shoes — European size 38, or U.S. 7 and a half. Then she turned to Mr. Laschet and added, “he is the one who can do it,” at the chancellery.Listening from the sidelines, Thilo Haberstroh, a native of the southwestern city of Karlsruhe who was in Stralsund on business and only happened on the rally by chance, said he wasn’t convinced that anyone in the running had what it takes to be the next chancellor of Germany.“This was interesting, but none of them have really made an impression on me,” he said. “I still don’t know who will get my vote on Sunday.” More

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      Germany’s Election Is Armin Laschet's to Lose, but Will He Succeed?

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      Armin Laschet, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, is flagging in the polls, and he seems to be dragging the party down with him.FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany — His party is the biggest in Germany. It has won all but three elections since 1950, including the past four. Its departing chancellor is more popular than any politician in the country. And German voters crave stability and continuity.Armin Laschet, the conservative Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, should be riding high. The race to replace Angela Merkel was his to lose.So far, he appears to be doing just that.Weeks before Germans vote on Sept. 26 in their most important election in a generation — one that will produce a chancellor who is not Ms. Merkel for the first time in 16 years — Mr. Laschet is sinking, and he is pulling his party down with him.The race is still close enough, and Germany’s coalition politics so unpredictable, that it would be dangerous to dismiss the conservative candidate. But after recent polls showed Mr. Laschet’s party dropping to record lows — of 20 percent to 22 percent support — his position is so dire that even some Christian Democrats have wondered aloud whether they picked the wrong candidate.More broadly, Mr. Laschet’s campaign has prompted queasiness among conservatives who fear they could be seeing a weakness in the party’s appeal that has been disguised for years by Ms. Merkel’s own popularity and is now exacerbated by her inability to groom a replacement.In 2018, she announced her personally chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a moderate centrist. But even with Ms. Merkel’s support, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer had trouble stepping out of the chancellor’s shadow and building her own base. She quit in 2020 as leader of the conservatives, leaving the door open for Mr. Laschet.Mr. Laschet had long boasted that if he could run Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, where he has been governor since 2017, he could run the country. But then extraordinary flooding this summer called even that credential into question, exposing flaws in his environmental policies and disaster management.Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr. Laschet visited the flood-ravaged district of Iversheim in July.Pool photo by Wolfgang Rattay“The biggest problem for Laschet is that he has not been able to convince voters that he can do the job like Merkel,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the University of Bonn.She cited images of him laughing as the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, made a somber speech after devastating flash floods that killed 180 people, and posing before a mound of trash to make a statement of his own. “He comes across as uncertain, flippant and unprofessional,” Ms. Reuschenbach said.In recent weeks, Mr. Laschet has seen his individual popularity drop below that of his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Scholz, while support for Mr. Laschet’s party has been in a free fall since late July. The situation is so dire that Ms. Merkel, who had said she wanted to stay out of the race, is now intervening and trying to rally voters for Mr. Laschet.“Let’s be honest: It is tight. It will be very tight in the coming weeks,” Markus Söder, the head of the conservatives’ Bavarian branch, the Christian Social Union, and an erstwhile rival, said at an election rally on Aug. 20 that was meant to propel Mr. Laschet’s campaign into a final, intense stretch. “It is no longer a question of how we could govern, but possibly of whether.”Mr. Söder openly challenged Mr. Laschet this year for the chance to succeed the chancellor, and he still enjoys a higher individual popularity rating among Germans than Mr. Laschet’s.Germans elect parties, not a chancellor candidate. But over the course of Ms. Merkel’s four terms in office, her party has enjoyed the so-called chancellor bonus, meaning the willingness of voters to effectively cast a ballot for consistency.Although Ms. Merkel remains Germany’s most popular politician, her recent attempts to drum up support for Mr. Laschet have failed to turn his fortunes around, partly because they have appeared last-minute and halfhearted.Election campaign billboards featuring Mr. Laschet, left, and his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Schoz.John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesInstead, Mr. Scholz now appears to be reaping the incumbent benefit, playing up his closeness to Ms. Merkel to become the second most popular politician in the country.“Even conservative voters tend to approve of Mr. Scholz,” said Ursula Münch, the director of the Academy for Political Education in Tützing.Yet Mr. Laschet is known for comebacks, for surviving blunders — including making up grades for exam papers when he was lecturing — and for his ability to turn around a sagging campaign in the final stretch. In the weeks before the 2017 vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, he focused on the need to increase security against a backdrop of record break-ins, to better integrate migrants and to reposition the state’s industry to focus on the future. The strategy worked and he defeated the incumbent Social Democratic governor, whom he had trailed in the polls for most of the race.Among Mr. Laschet’s influences is his faith. At a time when more and more Germans are quitting the Roman Catholic Church, Mr. Laschet is a proud member. “I am not someone who uses Bible verses in my politics,” he said. “But of course it has influenced me.” And Ms. Merkel has praised his Christianity as a guiding moral compass.Mr. Laschet noted that his faith was something he had in common with President Biden, adding that the last time the leaders of the United States and Germany shared that faith was in the 1960s, with President John F. Kennedy and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer — also a Christian Democrat.Mr. Laschet talking with residents of Frankfurt an der Oder, in eastern Germany, last month.Jens Schlueter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnother influence for Mr. Laschet is Aachen, Germany’s westernmost city, where he was born and raised. Growing up in a place with deep ties to Belgium and the Netherlands, Mr. Laschet has been integrated into the larger European ideal all of his life. He still maintains a home in Aachen with his wife, Susanne, whom he met through their church choir and youth group. Together they have three grown children, including, Joe Laschet, a social media influencer and fashionista for classic men’s wear.Mr. Laschet’s first political post was as a municipal official in 1979. He was elected to the German Parliament in 1994, and then, five years later, he was elected to represent his home region as a member of the European Parliament. He entered state government in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005, as Germany’s first minister for integration — a role focused on migrants and their descendants that earned him nationwide recognition.After the Christian Democrats suffered a stinging defeat in the 2012 state elections, Mr. Laschet helped rebuild the party. He supported Ms. Merkel’s decision to welcome more than a million migrants in 2015, and two years later, he became the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia.This January, he fought to become the leader of the Christian Democrats, beating Mr. Söder, who remains a more popular politician with many Germans, but whether Mr. Laschet can save himself remains to be seen.He has had some minor successes, including a feisty appearance in the first televised debate and deftly dealing with an angry vaccination opponent who stormed the stage during a campaign stop. Mr. Laschet has also assembled a team of experts, including former rivals, like Friedrich Merz, who is well liked among the party’s conservative wing, in an effort to show his bridge-building skills. But none of these things have made a dent in the widening gap with the Social Democrats.At a campaign stop in Frankfurt an der Oder, a woman wielding a cellphone pushed her way toward the candidate as he stood on a bridge overlooking the Polish border, making a statement to reporters about Germany’s role in Europe.Asked if she intended to vote for Mr. Laschet, she demurred. “I don’t know yet who I will vote for,” said the woman, Elisabeth Pillep, 44. “But I don’t think it will be him.” More

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      Olaf Scholz Is Running as the Next Angela Merkel in Germany, and It Seems to Be Working

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      Mr. Scholz, a Social Democrat who is modeling himself as the candidate of continuity, has a fair shot at being Germany’s next chancellor.BERLIN — When Olaf Scholz asked his fellow Social Democrats to nominate him as their candidate for chancellor, some inside his own camp publicly wondered if the party should bother fielding a candidate at all. Germany’s oldest party was not just trailing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives but had slipped into third place behind the Greens with a humiliating 14 percent in the polls. As recently as June, the German media was framing the contest to succeed Ms. Merkel as a two-way race between her conservatives and the ascendant Green Party.But with the Sept. 26 national elections fast approaching, Mr. Scholz and his once-moribund party have unexpectedly become the favorites to lead the next government in Europe’s biggest democracy.“It’s really touching to see how many citizens trust me to be the next chancellor,” a beaming Mr. Scholz told hundreds of supporters at a recent campaign event in Berlin, as he stood in front of a giant screen proclaiming: “Scholz will tackle it.”Ten months after Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the U.S. presidency for the Democrats, there is a real chance that Germany will be led by a center-left chancellor for the first time in 16 years. Not since the second term of former President Bill Clinton have both the White House and the German chancellery been in the hands of center-left leaders.“The atmosphere is just amazing right now — we’re almost in disbelief,” said Annika Klose, who is a Social Democrat candidate for Parliament and watched Mr. Scholz speak. “Since I joined the party in 2011, every election result was worse than the last.”With 25 percent in recent polls, Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats have overtaken both the Green Party and the conservative party of Chancellor Angela Merkel.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesIt’s not that Germans have suddenly shifted left. Mr. Scholz, who has served as Ms. Merkel’s finance minister and vice chancellor for the past four years, is in many ways more associated with the conservative-led coalition government than his own party. Two years ago, he lost the party’s leadership contest to a leftist duo, which attacked him for his moderate centrism.But Mr. Scholz has managed to turn what has long been the main liability for his party — co-governing as junior partners of Ms. Merkel’s conservatives — into his main asset: In an election with no incumbent, he has styled himself as the incumbent — or as the closest thing there is to Ms. Merkel.“Germans aren’t a very change-friendly people, and the departure of Angela Merkel is basically enough change for them,” said Christiane Hoffmann, a prominent political observer and journalist. “They’re most likely to trust the candidate who promises that the transition is as easy as possible.”With 25 percent in recent polls, Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats have overtaken the Greens, now lagging at 17 percent, and the conservatives at barely over 20 percent. But political analysts point out that this would hardly constitute a convincing victory.“No one has ever become chancellor since 1949 with so little trust,” said Manfred Güllner, head of the Forsa polling institute, referring to the founding year of the Federal Republic of Germany after World War II.“German voters are quite unsettled,” Mr. Güllner added. “After 16 years of a Merkel chancellorship that provided a certain sense of stability, we’re in a place we’ve never been before.”On the campaign trail Mr. Scholz has spoken admiringly of the current chancellor. A slickly produced TV ad by the party shows him walking in front of a projected image of Ms. Merkel. Mr. Scholz with Ms. Merkel in August. On the campaign trail Mr. Scholz has spoken admiringly of her. Maja Hitij/Getty ImagesHe has been photographed making the chancellor’s hallmark diamond-shaped hand gesture — the “Merkel rhombus” — and used the female form of the German word for chancellor on a campaign poster to convince Germans that he could continue Ms. Merkel’s work even though he is a man.The symbolism isn’t subtle, but it is working — so well in fact that the chancellor herself has felt compelled to push back on it — most recently in what might be her last speech in the Bundestag.Mr. Güllner, the pollster, said at least part of the recent surge in support for the Social Democrats comes from Merkel voters who are not happy with her party’s candidate, Armin Laschet, a conservative state governor who has repeatedly fumbled on the campaign trail. “There is no real Scholz enthusiasm in Germany,” said Ms. Hoffmann. “His success is due primarily to the weakness of the other candidates.”Unlike his rivals, Mr. Scholz hasn’t put a foot wrong in the campaign. He takes few risks and is controlled to the point that Germans have dubbed him the “Scholz-o-mat” — or “Scholz machine.” Sticking to his message of stability has also made it harder for his opponents to attack him on past blunders, although some have tried. As mayor of Hamburg he took private meetings with a banker seeking a million euro tax deferment, an episode that has become part of a state investigation, and it was on his watch as finance minister that the fraudulent German fintech company Wirecard imploded.But this has barely surfaced in the campaign. Instead, Mr. Scholz’s popularity has continued to rise. Mr. Scholz was a socialist in the 1970s who gradually mellowed into a post-ideological centrist. First defending workers as a labor lawyer, then defending painful labor-market reforms and now co-governing with a conservative chancellor, his journey in many ways tracks that of his party.In its 158-year-history the Social Democrats have been a formidable political force, fighting for workers’ rights, battling fascism and helping to shape Germany’s postwar welfare state. But after serving three terms as junior partners to Ms. Merkel, the party’s vote share had halved.Unlike his rivals, Mr. Scholz hasn’t put a foot wrong in the campaign. He takes few risks and is controlled to the point that Germans have dubbed him the “Scholz-o-mat” — or “Scholz machine.” Gordon Welters for The New York TimesGerhard Schröder, the last Social Democrat to become chancellor, won 39 percent of the vote in 2002. In 2005, when the Social Democrats entered their first coalition with Ms. Merkel, they were still winning 34 percent of votes; by 2017 that had shrunk to 20 percent.But even as his party sank to a postwar low, Mr. Scholz became one of Germany’s most popular politicians. It helped that as finance minister he controlled the government’s purse strings during the pandemic. After years of religiously sticking to Germany’s cherished balanced budget rule, he promised to bring out the “bazooka” to help businesses survive the pandemic, initially spending 353 billion euros, or about $417 billion, in recovery and assistance funds.“Scholz has zero charisma but he radiates stability — and he handed out the money in the economic crisis,” said Andrea Römmele, dean of the Berlin-based Hertie School of Governance. If current polls hold, the Social Democrats will finish first but will need two other parties to form a governing coalition. One would almost certainly be the Greens. As for the other, Mr. Scholz has all but ruled out the far-left Left Party, which would leave either the conservatives or — more likely — the free-market Liberal Democrats.Mr. Scholz has offered some ideas on how he would govern differently, but the changes are relatively modest and might be further watered down by his coalition partners, analysts predict.Mr. Scholz, who has served as Ms. Merkel’s finance minister and vice chancellor for the past four years, is in many ways more associated with the conservative-led coalition government than his own party. Gordon Welters for The New York TimesHe has tried to woo his party’s core working-class voters by using “Respect” as one of his main campaign slogans. In his stump speech, he emphasizes that people who earn as much as him should not get tax breaks. Instead, he wants to lower taxes for middle- and low-income earners and raise them modestly for those with incomes of more than 100,000 euros a year.He promises to raise the minimum wage to 12 euros an hour (instead of the current 9.60 euros), build 400,000 homes a year (instead of the about 300,000 built in 2020) and pass a raft of climate measures, though without getting out of coal before 2038.“We would not expect changes in taxes and spending to add up to a big additional fiscal stimulus,” wrote Holger Schmieding, chief economist for Berenberg Bank in a recent analysis of what a Scholz chancellorship would mean for financial markets. In a coalition with the Greens and the Liberals, he predicted, “the pragmatic Scholz himself would likely rein in the leftist inclinations” of his own party base.Only the conservatives, desperately under pressure, have been arguing the opposite.Even Ms. Merkel, who had said she wanted to stay out of the race, has recently felt compelled to distance herself from Mr. Scholz’s unabashed attempts to run as her clone.There is “an enormous difference for the future of Germany between him and me,” Ms. Merkel said. More

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      As German Elections Near, Angela Merkel Dips Into Campaign Fray

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      Germany’s chancellor pleaded with voters to support her party, which has flagging poll numbers and a candidate who has failed to capture imaginations.BERLIN — Angela Merkel has said she wanted to stay out of the election campaign for her replacement as Germany’s chancellor. But with her party polling at record lows, Ms. Merkel used a speech to Germany’s Parliament on Tuesday to plead with Germans to keep the Christian Democrats in power.Since late July, the conservative Christian Democrats and their Bavaria-only partners, the Christian Social Union, have been dropping steadily in the polls, while their candidate to replace Ms. Merkel, Armin Laschet, has struggled to overcome a series of gaffes that sent his own popularity plunging.The situation has become alarming enough that Ms. Merkel has dropped the pretense of being a bystander, and in recent weeks she has been using her voice and platform to try to drum up support for Mr. Laschet and distance herself from his main rival, Olaf Scholz.Mr. Scholz, Germany’s finance minister and Ms. Merkel’s vice chancellor, has been seeing his popularity rise, along with that of his center-left Social Democratic Party — often by positioning himself as the true successor to the chancellor under whom he has governed since 2017.In an effort to claw back support, Mr. Laschet has taken to warning that a government led by Mr. Scholz could shift the country away from its current centrist course, especially if he includes the Left Party in any governing coalition. The Left Party has repeatedly rejected Germany’s participation in NATO missions and questioned whether the alliance should exist.Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party has positioned himself as the true successor to Ms. Merkel.Pool photo by Jens SchlueterMs. Merkel, who is not seeking another term in office, echoed that warning on Tuesday in what was likely her last speech before Parliament as chancellor, urging voters to throw their support behind Mr. Laschet when they go to the polls on Sept. 26 to elect a new government. It is the first time since modern Germany was founded in 1949 that the incumbent chancellor is willingly ceding power.“In a few days, our citizens have to make a choice: either between a government with the Social Democrats and the Greens, that accepts support from the Left Party, or at least does not exclude it,” Ms. Merkel said, “or a German government led by the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union, with Armin Laschet as chancellor.”Despite Ms. Merkel’s intentions to stay out of the campaign, Tuesday’s remarks were not the first time she has stepped up to help her party’s flagging fortunes. On Aug. 20, when Mr. Laschet sought to relaunch his election campaign heading into the final weeks, Ms. Merkel praised, among other things, his Christianity as his guiding moral compass. Still, his fortunes failed to turn around.Last week, Mr. Laschet presented a team of expert advisers he hoped would shore up his numbers, but that appears to have had little impact.Polls released this week have shown Mr. Laschet’s party struggling to retain 20 percent support — a previously unthinkable position for a party that has governed Germany for all but two of the past seven decades.Armin Laschet, the candidate of the conservative Christian Democrats, has struggled to move past a series of gaffes.Daniel Roland/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMs. Merkel also went on the attack against Mr. Scholz, who during a campaign speech last week described the 50 million Germans who had been vaccinated against Covid-19 as “guinea pigs” who had proven the safety of the vaccines.“We were the guinea pigs for those who have waited,” Mr. Scholz told a radio station in North Rhine-Westphalia. “As one of the 50 million, I can say, it went well! Please join us!”In her speech on Tuesday, Ms. Merkel shot back: “Of course no one of us who has been vaccinated is in any way a guinea pig,” she said, adding that all vaccines had undergone the necessary testing to be granted approval.Mr. Scholz defended his comment as a lighthearted attempt to convince more people to get their inoculation against Covid-19. “If some people don’t want to laugh, but get upset, maybe it has something to do with their ratings in the polls that aren’t very funny,” he said.Long the traditional rivals of the center-right conservatives, the Social Democrats spent 12 of Ms. Merkel’s nearly 16 years in government as the junior coalition partner in her government, influencing many of the policies passed, like a national minimum wage and billions in Covid relief.Mr. Scholz, who was initially dismissed as a viable candidate for chancellor, has surprised the conservatives with his strong showing. Headed into the race, the Christian Democrats thought their biggest challenge would be the Green Party and its 40-year-old candidate, Annalena Baerbock, who has campaigned on a promise to usher in an era of change.Mr. Scholz, 63, has understood that after four terms of prosperity and relative stability under Ms. Merkel, Germans still value a feeling of security. He has focused his campaign on pledging to ensure jobs and working to shore up social stability by fighting child poverty and keeping housing prices in check.“A new beginning is needed,” Mr. Scholz told Parliament on Tuesday. “I hope, and I am sure, that it will succeed.”Christopher F. Schuetze More

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      It’s Election Season in Germany. No Charisma, Please!

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      The race to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years in office is the tightest in years. But the two leading candidates are anything but exciting, and that’s how Germans like it.BERLIN — The most popular politician who would like to be chancellor isn’t on the ballot. The leading candidate is so boring people compare him to a machine. Instead of “Yes, We Can!” voters are being fired up with promises of “Stability.”Germany is having its most important election in a generation but you would never know it. The newspaper Die Welt recently asked in a headline: “Is this the most boring election ever?”Yes and no.The campaign to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years of her dominating German and European politics is the tightest in Germany since 2005, and it just got tighter. The Social Democrats, written off as recently as a month ago, have overtaken Ms. Merkel’s conservatives for the first time in years.But the campaign has also revealed a charisma vacuum that is at once typical of postwar German politics and exceptional for just how bland Ms. Merkel’s two most likely successors are. No party is polling more than 25 percent, and for much of the race the candidate the public has preferred was none of the above.Whoever wins, however, will have the job of shepherding the continent’s largest economy, making that person one of Europe’s most important leaders, which has left some observers wondering if the charisma deficit will extend to a leadership deficit as well.While the election outcome may be exciting, the two leading candidates are anything but.A campaign billboard in Berlin featuring Mr. Scholz — sometimes known as the “Scholz-o-mat.”John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLess than a month before the vote, the field is being led by two male suit-wearing career politicians — one balding, one bespectacled, both over 60 — who represent the parties that have governed the country jointly for the better part of two decades.There is Armin Laschet, the governor of the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, who is running for Ms. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats. And then there is Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat who is Ms. Merkel’s finance minister and vice chancellor.The candidate of change, Annalena Baerbock, the 40-year-old co-leader of the Greens, has a bold reform agenda and plenty of verve — and has been lagging in the polls after a brief surge in the polls before the summer.It’s a nail-biter, German-style: Who can most effectively channel stability and continuity? Or put another way: Who can channel Ms. Merkel?For now it seems to be Mr. Scholz — a man Germans have long known as the “Scholz-o-mat” or the “Scholz machine” — a technocrat and veteran politician who can seem almost robotically on message. Where others have slipped up in the campaign, he has avoided mistakes, mostly by saying very little.“Most citizens know who I am,” was Mr. Scholz’s pitch to his party before being anointed chancellor candidate, conspicuously echoing Ms. Merkel’s iconic 2013 line to voters: “You know me.”More recently one of his campaign ads showed his reassuring smile with a caption using the female form of the word chancellor, telling voters that he has what it takes to lead the country even though he is a man. “Angela the second,” was the title of a Scholz profile in the magazine Der Spiegel this week.Mr. Scholz has tried so hard to perfect the art of embodying the chancellor’s aura of stability and calm that he has even been photographed holding his hands before him in the chancellor’s signature diamond shape — making what is known as the Merkel rhombus.Mr. Scholz at a campaign rally last week in Berlin. Opponents say he’s trying to sound like Chancellor Merkel.Florian Gaertner/Photothek, via Getty Images“Scholz is trying to be Merkel’s clone all the way down to the rhombus,” said John Kornblum, a former American ambassador to Germany who has been living in Berlin on and off since the 1960s. “The guy everyone likes best is the most boring guy in the election — maybe in the country. He makes watching water boil seem exciting.”But Germans, political observers point out, love boring.“There are few countries where such a premium is put on being dull,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European history at the University of Oxford who has written about the country.It’s not that Germans are resistant to charisma. When Barack Obama was running for president and delivered a rousing speech at the victory column in Berlin in 2008, 100,000 Germans cheered him on.But they don’t want it in their own politicians. That’s because the last time Germany had a rousing leader it didn’t end well, noted Jan Böhmermann, a popular TV-host and comedian.The haunting memory of Hitler’s Nazi party winning office in free elections has shaped Germany’s postwar democracy in various ways, Mr. Böhmermann said, “and one of them is that charisma is banned from politics.”Andrea Römmele, dean of the Berlin-based Hertie School, put it this way: “A Trump character could never become chancellor here.”Paradoxically, that’s at least in part thanks to an electoral system bequeathed to Germany by America and its Allies after World War II. Unlike in the American presidential system, German voters don’t get to elect their chancellor directly. They vote for parties; the parties’ share of the vote determines their share of the seats in Parliament; and then Parliament elects the chancellor.And because it just about always takes more than one party to form a government — and this time probably three — you can’t be too rude about the people you might rely on to be your coalition partners.“Your rival today might be your finance minister tomorrow,” Ms. Römmele said.Mr. Laschet, center, campaigning door to door last week in Berlin. He has promised to “secure stability.”Michael Kappeler/Picture Alliance, via Getty ImagesAs for the chancellor candidates, they are not chosen in primaries but by party officials who tend to pick people like themselves: career politicians who have given years of service to the party machine.Being good on television and connecting with voters doesn’t cut it, said Jürgen Falter, an electoral expert at the University of Mainz. “It’s a strict oligarchic system,” he said. “If we had primaries, Markus Söder would have been the candidate.”Mr. Söder, Bavaria’s ambitious governor, has heaps of beer-tent charisma and is the most popular politician in the country after Ms. Merkel herself. He was eager to run for chancellor, but the conservatives picked Mr. Laschet, a longstanding Merkel ally, not least, Ms. Römmele said, because at the time he looked most like “the continuity candidate.”But Mr. Scholz has beaten him at his game. During a televised debate between the chancellor candidates last Sunday, an exasperated Mr. Laschet accused Mr. Scholz of trying to “sound like Ms. Merkel.”“I find I sound like Olaf Scholz,” Mr. Scholz replied deadpan.“These days you’re doing the rhombus,” Mr. Laschet hit back — before himself invoking the chancellor in his closing statement.“Stability and reliability in difficult times,” he said. “That’s what marked us from Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl to Angela Merkel. The team C.D.U. wants to secure stability.”Recent polls give Mr. Scholz’ Social Democrats the edge with between 23 and 25 percent, followed by 20 to 22 percent for Mr. Laschet’s Christian Democrats, or C.D.U., and around 17 percent for the Greens.From second left: Mr. Laschet, Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party, and Mr. Scholz during a televised debate on Sunday.Pool photo by Michael KappelerTo his fans, Mr. Scholz is a voice of calm and confidence, a pragmatist from Germany’s taciturn north who represents the elusive silent majority. “Liberal, but not stupid,” is how he once described himself.But critics note that while crises have come crashing down on the election campaign — epic floods, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the pandemic — a sense of urgency is missing from the campaigns of the two leading candidates.Much like Mr. Laschet, Mr. Scholz talks about tackling climate change but above all promises stable pensions, safe jobs, a balanced budget and not getting out of coal too soon.“The big story is that we have a world in crisis and there isn’t any sense of real crisis in Germany,” said Mr. Garton Ash of Oxford University.A bold vision for change has never been a vote winner in Germany. Konrad Adenauer, the first postwar chancellor, won an absolute majority for the Christian Democrats by promising “No Experiments.” Helmut Schmidt, a Social Democrat, once famously said, “If you have visions you should go to the doctor.”As for Ms. Merkel, she has come to embody Germany’s distinctive political tradition of change through consensus perhaps more than any of her predecessors by co-governing with her traditional opponents for three out of her four terms.Mr. Böhmermann, the comedian, calls this a “democratic state of emergency” for Germany. “You could say we were well-managed over the last 16 years — or you could say we were anesthetized for 16 years.”“We need vision,” he lamented. “No one dares to articulate a clear political vision, especially the main candidates.”Chancellor Merkel last week at the Parliament in Berlin.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockChristopher F. Schuetze More

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      What You Need to Know About Germany’s National Election

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      Germans will vote on a new government in September, one without Angela Merkel, who will step down after 16 years in power.BERLIN — Germans will vote on a new government on Sept. 26 and for the first time since 2005, Angela Merkel is not running. After nearly 16 years in power, Ms. Merkel, 67, will leave control of Europe’s largest economy to a new chancellor.The race for the chancellery is wide open and in the wake of Brexit and the election of President Biden in the United States, the world will be watching to see which direction Germans take their country.What is at stake?Guiding Germany out of the coronavirus pandemic, with a focus on reviving the economy, remains a most pressing issue on the domestic front. Climate policies, which will be more urgent after recent floods, and greening of the country’s industrial sector are also on voters’ minds. And digitization and ensuring social equality and security have also featured in debates.Whoever takes power will decide how much to build on Ms. Merkel’s policies and how much to set the country on a new course. If her conservative party remains in power, there is likely to be more consistency than if the environmentalist Greens make history and take the chancellery for the first time.On the foreign policy front, the conservatives would largely seek continuity on Germany’s booming trade with China and its positioning on Russia, including the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that is expected to be completed later this year and would transport natural gas directly to Germany from Russia, circumventing Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. The Greens are against the pipeline.All political parties — except the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD — agree that Germany belongs firmly in the European Union. The Greens are pushing for a more ambitious revival of the European project, with tougher action against Hungary and other members that fail to uphold democratic principles.For years, Germany’s approach to China has been “change through trade,” but China’s repression of dissent at home and flexing of its muscles abroad have called that strategy into question. The United States has pressed reluctant allies to take a harder line on China.Unlike four years ago, when migration was still on the minds of many Germans and the anti-immigrant AfD first won seats in the Bundestag, Germany’s Parliament, it has struggled to attract new voters this year. The party has been polling around 10 percent and analysts say that it is weakened by deep inner divides and lack of a galvanizing issue.A restaurant in Berlin this month. Guiding Germany out of the coronavirus pandemic, with a focus on reviving the economy, remains a most pressing issue on the domestic front.Maja Hitij/Getty ImagesWho will be chancellor?Polls indicate that, as usual, no party will win a majority of seats in the Parliament, so the one that wins the most seats would be given first crack at forming a coalition government and choosing a chancellor.Each party names its candidate for chancellor before campaigning begins, although the public focuses more heavily on the candidates for the leading parties who have a realistic chance of winning.Traditionally, those have been the center-right Christian Democrats (Ms. Merkel’s party) and the center-left Social Democrats. But for the first time, the candidate for the environmentalist Greens is viewed as having a real shot at the chancellery.Here are the leading hopefuls for chancellor:The Greens: Annalena Baerbock, a co-leader of the Greens since 2018, is considered more pragmatic than many in her party, which has its roots in the environmental and student protest movements of the previous century. At 40, she is the youngest candidate, the only woman, and the only one who has not previously held an elected office.Annalena Baerbock, the co-head of the German Greens Party, in Berlin last month.Pool photo by Steffi LoosThe Christian Democrats: Armin Laschet leads the Christian Democratic Union and is the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. He is considered the choice of continuity, having largely agreed with Ms. Merkel on major policy decisions, including allowing some 1 million migrants into the country in 2015. But a public dispute for the chancellor candidacy with the leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union — the two parties campaign and caucus together in Parliament — weakened him at the start of the race. And gaffes he has made in recent days after massive flooding hit Germany have not helped him.Armin Laschet, the Christian Democratic Union leader and candidate for Chancellery, second left, visited the flood-ravaged town of Bad Munstereifel with Chancellor Angela Merkel, center right, on Tuesday.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Social Democrats: Olaf Scholz, of the Social Democrats, Germany’s finance minister and vice chancellor since 2018, is considered the most experienced of the three. He served as labor minister in a previous government under Ms. Merkel and has years of experience at the state level in Hamburg. But his party has largely been polling in third place, behind the conservatives and the Greens, and Mr. Scholz has struggled to generate buzz around his campaign.Germany’s finance minister and vice chancellor Olaf Scholz, center, attending his Social Democratic party’s “Future Camp” in June in Berlin.Pool photo by Fabian SommerOther parties running for seats in Parliament are the free-market Free Democrats, the far-left Left Party and the AfD. Dozens of smaller parties, from the Anarchist Pogo Party to the Animal Protection Party or the Free Voters, are also on the ballot, but are not expected to cross the 5-percent hurdle necessary to earn representation in the Bundestag.Why does Germany matter?Within the European Union, Germany is often seen as a de facto leader. It has both the largest economy and the largest population, and together with France is widely viewed as a motor for policy and decision-making.Under Ms. Merkel, who became one of the most senior leaders within the 27-member bloc, that influence grew even further, although she failed to win a consensus among the member states on refugee policy and on preventing Hungary and Poland from democratic backsliding.Ms. Merkel also used her country’s weight as the world’s fourth-largest economy and a member of the Group of 7 industrialized nations to champion global climate policy and push for tough sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea. Her successor will inherit thorny issues of how to deal with an increasingly powerful China and a push from some within Germany and the E.U. who are ready to restore trade with Moscow. The core relationship with the United States is only beginning to find its footing again after four destabilizing years of the Trump administration.During Ms. Merkel’s four terms in office, the nation of 83 million has undergone a generational shift, becoming more ethnically diverse, but also aging considerably — more than half of all eligible voters are 50 or older. Social norms have become more liberal, with a legal right to gay marriage and a nonbinary gender option on official documents. But a resurgent far right and a breakdown of political discourse at the local level have threatened the country’s cohesion.Ms. Merkel giving her last government declaration at the Bundestag in Berlin last month.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesWhat role will Chancellor Merkel play?Until a new government can be formed, a process that can take several weeks to several months, Ms. Merkel will remain in office as acting head of the government. Forming the government will depend on how the vote falls and how difficult it is for the winning party to reach agreement with smaller supporters to build a government.The chancellor gave up leadership of her party in December 2018, but remained as head of government until after the election, a position that has left her a lame duck, rendering her decision-making more difficult in the second year of the pandemic. She has vowed to stay out of the election campaign and has so far kept her focus instead on managing the coronavirus pandemic. More