The SPD's election campaign is professional, even original.

And she has a good and respectable candidate.

Scholz has both domestic and international experience and has easily cashed in the Greens' election campaign hit, a climate protection ministry with veto rights, by declaring the issue to be an even more important matter for the boss and Scholz.

It is almost impossible for the finance minister to laugh inappropriately in the flood area, as the cameras do not even need to look at them. But that is also the problem: Nobody is looking. The candidate is not an issue, the SPD certainly not and the traffic light, the only power option for Scholz, can hardly be taken seriously.

All of that can change in the seven weeks leading up to the general election.

It is true that the SPD has been nailed to 16 percent in opinion polls for a long time.

But the citizen is more agile than in previous elections.

Why shouldn't the SPD also benefit from it?

A good 20 percent of the second votes could possibly be enough for the chancellorship.

For the SPD, however, there remains a problem: it relies entirely on the red-painted Merkel type (“Scholz tackles it”), but it will only be on the ballot in Potsdam.

The party must disappear for the other German citizens at the same time and remain eligible for election.

Merkel is no longer running, but is missing

That worked well for Merkel.

However, it should not be concluded from this that the Germans primarily voted for people.

The ties to parties - it doesn't always have to be the same - are still strong.

It is paradoxical: the change will come with the election in September, because Merkel will no longer run.

But many will miss the Chancellor.

So the competition between the new candidates revolves around who is most like Merkel.

Laschet, of all people, is doing the worst right now.

Which is why the Union does it very differently than the SPD: It is not the candidate that is the focus of the campaign, but rather a vague feeling (“Do Germany together”).

It is quite possible that the voters will decide in favor of it.