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Calw (AP) - After the power struggle between the CDU and CSU for the candidacy for chancellor, SPD Finance Minister Olaf Scholz sees the chances that the Union will have to go into the opposition after the federal election.

"It is more likely that the CDU will end up in the opposition than that they will provide the next head of government," said the Chancellor candidate on Friday evening during an online discussion of the SPD in Calw and Freudenstadt.

Despite the rather weak poll numbers, he was confident that he would be able to become Federal Chancellor after the election on September 26th.

"The SPD has every chance that it will be ahead in the end."

For some time now, the Social Democrats have only been in third place behind the Union and the Greens in polls.

At the online conference, the SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken was to be re-elected as a candidate for the Bundestag. The 59-year-old was elected to the new dual leadership of the SPD one and a half years ago together with Norbert Walter-Borjans. Among other things, the two had left Scholz, who had also applied, behind them. Now the Vice Chancellor Esken praised the fact that they had managed together, “that the SPD had become a closed, one acting party”. He campaigned among the delegates to nominate Esken. "She really is a very impressive woman." The digital expert won only 16.9 percent of the votes in the 2017 election and entered the Bundestag via the SPD's state list.

Like Scholz, the SPD leader declared that the current coalition partner in the federal government must finally be voted out of office.

"The Conservatives are up to their necks in corruption affairs," said Esken, referring to the Union's mask affair.

"It is time that the Union was given a break on the opposition bench."

There are some Union MPs suspected of corruption, some of whom have already resigned from the CDU and CSU because of this.

It is about politicians who have received commissions themselves or through their companies for the mediation of corona protective masks or who are suspected of having paid influence in favor of the Caucasus Republic of Azerbaijan.

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