Next German Federal Election - Chancellor-candidates

Chancellor-candidates

Although the "chancellor-candidates" (Kanzlerkandidaten) play a very important role in election campaigns, their "office" is not regulated in any law. So it is up to each party to determine how (and if at all) to name a "chancellor-candidate".

The SPD names a chancellor-candidate while the CDU and the CSU name a common one. The smaller Bundestag parties (FDP, Left and Greens) usually do not name a chancellor-candidate as it is very improbable for such a candidate to actually be elected chancellor. They instead name one or two persons (Spitzenkandidaten) who are to become the faces of that party's campaign. Fringe parties sometimes name a chancellor-candidate although there is nearly no chance for them to win seats in the Bundestag (especially due to the required minimum quota of votes required to be granted any seats) much less have their candidate become chancellor.

While a sitting chancellor is usually named chancellor-candidate for his or her own party, the main opposition party's process to determine their chancellor-candidate differs. Most times, such a person is determined in an inner party circle and then anointed in a party convention.

As the CDU/CSU is the main government party, CDU chairwoman (and incumbent chancellor) Angela Merkel is unlikely to be challenged as chancellor-candidate. In the SPD, the situation was a bit less clear: There were four candidates in the discussion. While Sigmar Gabriel, the party chairman, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the parliamentary caucus leader, and Peer Steinbrück, former minister-president of Nordrhein-Westfalen and former federal minister of Finance, were quasi-official contenders for the candidacy, incumbent Nordrhein-Westfalen minister-president Hannelore Kraft had denied interest in the candidacy.

Gabriel, Steinmeier and Steinbrück all have a bad electoral record as they all had led their party into painful defeats in state or general elections (Gabriel and Steinbrück lost their inherited minister-president offices in 2003 and 2005, Steinmeier failed as a chancellor-candidate in 2009). On 28 September 2012, the party announced that Steinbrück would be the SPD's chancellor-candidate.