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To thunderous applause and throaty cheers, Olaf Scholz appeared before supporters on Sunday evening wearing what a frustrated rival recently dubbed his “Smurf-like grin”.
Looking haggard, the man who hopes to be Germany’s next – Social Democrat (SPD) – chancellor basked in his moment with a thin and crooked smile, framed by flushed red cheeks and exhausted eyes. After nearly 20 years of electoral disaster, early projections suggested Mr Scholz had led the party back to the top on election night.
To his left, an outsized statue of SPD legend Willy Brandt – for four terms an eye-witness to an apparently undead party– held his hand out, Moses-like over Germany’s centre-left revival.
SPD general secretary Lars Klingbeil, engineer of the successful campaign with striking print advertisements and clear messaging, was hugged from all and joked: “The SPD’s back on the pitch.”
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Once the applause ebbed away, Mr Scholz said that, regardless of the final result, the signal from German voters on Sunday was clear: “The bar for the SPD is rising, the bar for the CDU is down, well down. Now we have to talk to each other and I want that it happens quickly.”
Self-made obstacles
The mood was bleak over at the Konrad Adenauer Haus, CDU headquarters. It took two hours for its candidate Armin Laschet to appear, wearing a nervous expression, after failing his nine-month mission impossible.
In January he was elected CDU leader, in April the lead candidate for the CDU and its Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The months since then were a self-made obstacle course: an empty party programme, a series of gaffes, CSU slings and arrows from Munich and
– the greatest challenge – the long shadow from the chancellery of the still-popular Angela Merkel. CDU officials settled in for a long night as they prayed for a miracle: that disastrous projected results shift to more favourable actual counts and they gain from a record postal vote.
If the CDU can keep on the SPD tail, party strategists say they will insist on participating in coalition talks. If the SPD pulls ahead, and the CDU faces opposition, the knives will be out for Mr Laschet.
Disaster for CDU
Early poll analysis showed the scale of the CDU disaster. Voters are no longer confident the party is credible representative of its core competences: economy and law and order.
Catalysing the collapse was a haemorrhage of borrowed Merkel votes.
Some 1.4 million previous CDU voters shifted to the SPD after Olaf Scholz – outgoing federal finance minister – presented himself as the true continuity candidate in Berlin.
Two thirds of Germans see Mr Scholz as the most likely and capable next chancellor, according to a post-election poll by the Forsa agency, compared to just 23 per cent for Mr Laschet. Apart from the tight result, any future talks will focus on an untested three-way coalition.
Despite voting for a three-party government, German voters are sceptical towards those options on the table. One in two voters (49 per cent) reject the two most likely three-way alliances: an SPD-led or CDU-led alliance with Greens and Free Democrats.
Slightly more popular is the option that dare not speak its name: a fifth grand coalition, this time led by the SPD.