Germany: Klingbeil and Esken remain dual leaders of the SPD in Germany

class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 fmXrkB”>

Klingbeil received 85.6 percent of the votes, only slightly less than 86.3 percent in 2021. Esken achieved a significantly better result with 82.6 percent than two years ago with 76.7 percent.

The 62-year-old Esken has been SPD chairman for four years. In 2019, she won together with Norbert Walter-Borjans in a second election of SPD members against current Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his current Construction Minister Klara Geywitz.

After the 2021 federal elections, in which the SPD became the strongest party for the first time in almost twenty years, Lars Klingbeil, now 45, rose to the dual leadership of Walter-Borjans. Until then, he was general secretary and led the election campaign, from which Scholz eventually became chancellor.

Elections, migration policy and budget crisis are causing unrest

In the first two years of their term of office, the two saw their task mainly as supporting the first SPD government leader in sixteen years in the difficult triple alliance with the Greens and the FDP. However, the crushing election defeats in Hesse and Bavaria, dissatisfaction with the traffic light course in migration policy and, most recently, the budget crisis have caused unrest in the party and led to calls for the SPD to raise its profile.

Next year there will be the European elections, three state elections in East Germany and several local elections. The big question here is: will the right-wing populist AfD continue its rise and the simultaneous crash of the traffic lights, which has been exacerbated by the current budget crisis? In the most recent polls for the federal elections, the SPD only got 14 to 17 percent – ​​compared to 25.7 percent in the 2021 elections. The three traffic light parties together fell from 52 percent in 2021 to 33 to 38 percent in national surveys Today.

Klingbeil sees dual leadership as a “sign of stability”

When Klingbeil announced his renewed candidacy, he viewed the move as a “sign of stability” in turbulent times. Together with Esken he has already achieved a lot. “But we’re not done yet.” Esken recalled that she became party leader in 2019 with the goal of winning the 2021 federal election. “I want to say very clearly: it is now also our goal. We have elections ahead of us that we want to win.”

(SDA)

Source: Blick