At the end of February, Germans will be heading to the polls to hold early elections. In Germany, that’s a big deal, because it’s not a country like Bulgaria, Israel, or Italy, where people are used to early and snap elections. No, in German polity stability is extremely important for obvious historic reasons.

Now, the incumbent coalition, consisting of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Liberal Party, has fallen apart—that’s why there are early elections. (Parenthesis: in Germany, “liberal” has a different meaning than in the US or the UK for that matter. In Germany, liberals are clearly on the right of the political spectrum.)

Be that as it may, as I write in my book, Beat the Incumbent, elections with an incumbent are foremost a referendum on the incumbent. Of course, on Election Day, on the ballot, people must choose out of various options. In Germany, voters must choose parties, but the dynamics of the campaign are really a referendum on the top candidate of the incumbent party. I often use the analogy to poker: do you want to play him or trade him?

In Germany, the incumbent Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has become so unpopular that even people within his own party have been floating the idea of exchanging the top candidate—that maybe it would be better for the Social Democrats to enter the election campaign with a new horse. Olaf Scholz was able to silence those talks, but if anybody needed an illustration of how weak and unpopular the incumbent chancellor is, I think that’s a pretty good indicator for the lack of enthusiasm for Scholz among his own base.

The main challenger is Friedrich Merz from the Christian Democratic Party (CDU). In Germany, the CDU is the de facto government party—it is the party that historically and structurally has been stronger than the Social Democrats. So, for Merz, it’s an easy campaign in the sense that he can play defense. As we say in the campaign jargon—”don’t interrupt when your opponent self-destructs.”

To my taste, though, Merz is taking the not interrupting a bit too much to the extreme, to the point where we barely hear him and barely notice him during the campaign. And I think there’s a risk there. Despite him being far ahead in the surveys, he also has competition on the right. Alice Weidel from the AfD might steal the show.

PS: Check out my channel on YouTube where the latest video is on this very topic.