The SPD provides the chancellor – what does it matter to you if you lose members?
Yes, the party must worry.
Not only because she obviously cheated during the election campaign when she proudly raved about the strength of the 400,000 members.
In the past, the SPD always felt strong when it was part of a movement.
According to the motto: The new era moves with us.
It was like that with Willy Brandt in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and it was like that with Gerhard Schröder at the end of the millennium.
And now Olaf Scholz?
The current figures show: A Scholz does not make any movement.
The SPD conducted a stringent and smooth election campaign.
But she was also lucky: Merkel no longer competed, the Union parties were at odds, Scholz had moved up the popular list of citizens for years – when many otherwise had already lost faith in the SPD.
In the end, Scholz managed to pull his party up as well.
The relatively new chancellor is already dreaming of a social-democratic decade.
For this he needs first and foremost votes and not new members.
But Scholz - election winner with just 25.7 percent - will not be able to detach himself from the weakening impression that his party is leaving.
And the Greens show that membership in a party is still something worth considering for many citizens.