A bellwether of broader national struggles?

After the Social Democrats slumped to defeat in local elections in their west German heartlands, are we about to witness a repeat of the Scholz years?

Exactly one year ago, Germany’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) were in high spirits.

They had just come out on top in the Brandenburg state election in September 2024, narrowly and unexpectedly beating the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which had been surging in popularity across eastern Germany.

The victory, while only by a few percentage points, gave the struggling party a renewed burst of optimism. The mood was clear: ‘If we can do it in the east, we can do it everywhere.’

“I, as party leader, want us to win the national parliamentary election,” SPD leader Lars Klingbeil declared at the time. “That’s 12 months away, and we will fight together.”

Fast forward a year, and the reality looks quite different from what Klingbeil had hoped. For one, national elections were already held in February after SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular government collapsed the previous autumn. In that vote, the SPD recorded its worst national results in post-war Germany at 16.4 percent.

…