(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will submit to a parliamentary vote of confidence on Monday that he has every intention of losing to trigger a snap election on Feb. 23. Here’s what you need to know:
How did we get here?
Scholz dismantled his three—party ruling coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats last month when he sacked FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner due to a budget dispute.
That left the Social Democrat leader without a parliamentary majority and little option but to force a February election, seven months before the scheduled end of his four-year term.
What’s happening Monday?
Scholz will deliver a 25-minute statement to lawmakers in the lower house of parliament, or Bundestag, starting at 1 p.m. local time in Berlin, followed by a two-hour debate. The result of the roll-call vote should be known by around 4 p.m.
The far-right Alternative for Germany threatened to disrupt Scholz’s plans by voting in favor of the confidence motion, prompting the Greens to announce that they plan to abstain. That makes it all-but certain Scholz will lose as planned.
What comes next?
Once that happens, he can ask President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to dissolve the Bundestag and set the election date. Steinmeier, a former Social Democrat vice chancellor, has indicated that he’ll go along with Scholz’s timetable.
What are the polls saying?
Just over two months out, the conservative CDU/CSU alliance under Friedrich Merz leads at around 31%, the AfD is second with about 18% and the SPD third at 17%, according to the latest Bloomberg polling average.
The Greens are fourth with 13% and the BSW — a new far-left party founded in January — fifth at 5%. Lindner’s FDP remains in danger of missing the 5% threshold for getting into parliament with 4%.
The conservatives have ruled out cooperating with the AfD, meaning their only path to a Bundestag majority will likely be to team up with either the SPD or the Greens, or both.
Is Scholz finished?
Not necessarily. He proved in the last federal election in 2021 that he’s capable of pulling off an unexpected comeback and Merz’s individual popularity as political leader isn’t particularly strong.
A Forsa poll for German broadcaster n-tv published last week showed that if Germans could vote directly for chancellor, Merz was in first place with 26% but had lost eight percentage points compared with November. Scholz gained five points to 18%.
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