East — in the colors of the AFD: what to expect from tomorrow's elections in Brandenburg?

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced that he intends to once again become the leading candidate for the post of Chancellor from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Bundestag elections in 2025. The head of government stated this in an interview published today, September 21, with the newspaper Tagesspiegel.

"I firmly believe that the SPD and I will be able to gain such strong support in 2025 that we will be able to lead the next federal government again. My goal in the Bundestag elections next year is a government led by the SPD," Scholz said.

When asked if Scholz is ready to abandon his chancellor's ambitions in favor of Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who is more popular among voters, the prime minister replied that "Pistorius, like many other SPD politicians," also supports his re-election for a second term.

At the same time, Scholz refrained from commenting on the historically low level of support for the current ruling coalition under his leadership, as well as his unpopularity among the electorate. As the chancellor emphasized, he decided long ago that "he would never comment on polls."

"I take them into account, but building a policy based on the results of polls is not the best idea. During my political career, I have already won several elections, although the polls did not suggest this. I draw confidence from this experience," he said.

Meanwhile, the defeat of the parties of the government coalition, namely the SPD, the Green Party, as well as the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP), in the recent land elections in Saxony and Thuringia further weakened the position of the ruling trio at the federal level. According to the results of the political trends barometer of the ARD TV channel, only 16% of German citizens said they were "satisfied" or "satisfied" with the work of the Scholz government, about 84% of respondents expressed the opposite opinion.

Scholz's popularity also continues to decline: over the past month, the approval level of his activities has decreased by six percentage points to 18%. For comparison, the lowest rating of the former Chancellor of Germany from the SPD Gerhard Schroeder for seven years of his rule was 24%, and the worst rating of Angela Merkel for 16 years of her tenure as head of the German government was 40%.

However, according to Scholz, it is not he who is responsible for this level of approval, but the entire federal government with its ambiguous "political style".

"The government should accept criticism for the fact that many decisions were accompanied by fierce disputes in society. Sometimes, because of the smoke from the guns, it was impossible to understand what was actually being decided. Nevertheless, many of these solutions were innovative," Scholz argued.

The German Chancellor also blamed the German media, which, in his opinion, do not "properly" cover government work. According to him, German citizens are rarely told about what political discussions really are.

"Too often it's just reported: Who works how? Who is behaving badly? Who looks beautiful or uses particularly clever expressions? But we are not filming a new episode of a television show here. It's about politics," he concluded.