By Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke
BERLIN (Reuters) - Olaf Scholz, Germany's least popular chancellor on record, is facing growing calls within his Social Democrats (SPD) to step aside and let his Defence Minister Boris Pistorius instead lead the centre-left party into next year's federal election.
Germany is set to hold a snap election on Feb. 23 after Scholz's ideologically diverse three-way coalition of SPD, Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) collapsed last week following months of infighting.
Scholz, 66, has said he wants to run for a second term and SPD leaders this week individually backed his bid, counting on his experience paying off - despite the party languishing in third place behind the opposition conservatives and far-right AfD on around 16%, down 10 points since the 2021 election.
However, the final decision is likely to be announced at a party congress in January, and this week a raft of lesser-known, regional politicians called for a rethink in what would be an unprecedented move - akin to that of the U.S. Democrats in July in persuading President Joe Biden to drop his re-election bid.
"Scholz has made good policies over the past three years, but he has not managed to win people over and communicate leadership," two state lawmakers in Hamburg, where Scholz was mayor from 2011-2018, said in a post on Instagram.
"We believe that the negative image that people in the country have of him can no longer be repaired," said Tim Stoberock and Markus Schreiber. "Unfortunately, cadres in all parties tend not to want to see such relatively simple facts."
Like other regional lawmakers, they threw their support behind Pistorius, 64, who consistently ranks as Germany's most popular politician - an unusual feat for a defence minister in a country that has an awkward relationship with its military.
Scholz meanwhile came second-to-last in the latest survey by INSA of Germany's top 20 politicians published this week.
In a survey of SPD supporters by pollster Forsa, some 58% said they backed Pistorius as chancellor candidate compared with just 30% for Scholz. Asked if he would run, Pistorius has repeatedly said the SPD already has a candidate in Scholz.
The SPD leadership has made clear to Scholz he needs to do a better job at communicating clear messages and they will be keeping an eye on polls in coming weeks, in effect putting him on notice, party sources said.
INFIGHTING
Scholz was lauded at the start of his term for his quick response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and helping steer the economy through the ensuing energy crisis.
Coalition infighting, however, has eroded support for the governing parties as well as for Scholz himself.
Critics say Scholz lacks leadership, resulting in messy, belated compromises, and also the communication skills required to reassure the population in particularly challenging times.
His somewhat robotic style of speaking as well as his lack of self-criticism, even after the collapse of the coalition, grate, say his detractors.
Pistorius, by contrast, is a "decisive politician who communicated clearly and could bring people together", the SPD mayor of Munich, Dieter Reiter, told Reuters.
He may, however, not want to burn his chance for other leadership roles by running as chancellor candidate now when the SPD is on track to lose, said Philipp Koeker, political scientist at the University of Hanover.
SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch said Scholz's dismissal of Finance Minister and FDP leader Christian Lindner last week showed "strength, not weakness".
The election campaign will now focus minds on candidates' experience - standing Scholz in good stead as a proven steady hand, his supporters said. By contrast, the main opposition conservatives' candidate for chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has no government experience and is prone to gaffes.
"The government experience, the character traits and also the level-headedness speak in favour of Olaf Scholz," Health Minister Karl Lauterbach of the SPD told Deutschlandfunk radio. "He is our strongest candidate."
Scholz's backers also point to 2021 when he unexpectedly clinched the election after a last-minute sprint in polls.
But he now enters the ring with a handicap.
"His image as a failure is certainly attached to him now," said Forsa chief Manfred Guellner. "That is a disadvantage in the election campaign."