Around three months ahead of Germany's early elections, the country's Social Democrats are set to formally nominate Olaf Scholz as their chancellor candidate, in spite of his abysmal approval ratings.
His formal nomination comes after the party was divided by two weeks of heated debate over whether the much more popular Defence Minister Boris Pistorius should be swapped in as a replacement candidate for Scholz, who faced calls from within his centre-left party to bow out.
It was only on Thursday that Pistorius openly confirmed he would not stake a claim to the chancellor candidacy, thus paving the way for Scholz's nomination.
The defence minister is one of 33 voting members of the party executive who will decide on the chancellor's nomination on Monday.
Scholz is the third chancellor candidate to be put forward by his party for the upcoming election on February 23, after CDU/CSU leader Friedrich Merz and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck for the Greens.
On December 7, the executive board of the far-right AfD are set to nominate party leader Alice Weidel as its chancellor candidate. This means that for the first time there will be four chancellor candidates in a federal election.
Scholz has been in the job since 2021. But he and the Social Democrats are plagued by poor poll ratings, which prompted speculation that the party could ditch him in favour of another candidate.
A number of party politicians at the local and national levels had openly spoken out in favour of a candidacy by Pistorius in recent days.
Scholz has been insisting that he would stand again. But while party leadership had continued to back him publicly they had refrained from nominating him as the party's official candidate.
Early nationwide elections were triggered after Scholz's three-party governing coalition collapsed earlier this month following the chancellor's decision to sack former finance minister Christian Lindner.
However, if Scholz wants to be re-elected, he will have to pull off an extreme comeback, as the SPD is currently polling far behind the main CDU/CSU conservative alliance. It also trails the far-right Alternative for Germany.
According to a recent poll by the Bild newspaper, Scholz's personal approval rating stands at 31.4%. Pistorius was the most popular politician in the country at 52.8%.
