Pistorius says he won't run for chancellor candidate in February's snap elections

Germany's Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said he is "not available" to run as a candidate for chancellor in February's snap election, saying he would instead support Olaf Scholz's re-election bid.

The announcement, which Pistorius made in a video posted to social media channels belonging to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), ends days of speculation about him replacing Scholz.

"I have emphasized this over and over in recent weeks and I'm saying it again as clearly as possible; in Olaf Scholz, we have an excellent chancellor," Pistorius, currently polling as Germany's most popular politician, said.

"He led a coalition that would have been challenging in normal times through possibly the biggest crisis of recent decades."

He added not running was his "sovereign and entirely personal" decision.

Collapse of the coalition

Chancellor Olaf Scholz called a snap election after the collapse of the governing ‘Traffic Light Coalition’ at the start of November.

As per German election rules, the Bundestag will hold a government confidence vote on December 16th before voters head to the polls on February 23.  

Germany's coalition government, made up of the SDP, the FDP and the Greens, collapsed on 7 November after Scholz fired the then Finance Minister and FDP party head, Christian Lindner.

"He (Lindner) has broken my trust too many times", Scholz told the press at the time, adding that there is "no more basis of trust for further cooperation" as the FDP leader is "more concerned with his own clientele and the survival of his own party."

The coalition had governed Germany since 2021 and its collapse meant Scholz's government no longer had a majority in parliament.

The SDP confirmed on Thursday that they would nominate Scholz as their lead candidate for chancellor next week.

But according to current opinion polls, the chances of Germany's next chancellor belonging to the centre-left Social Democrats is highly unlikely.

Most pollsters put the centre-right Christian Democrats at more than double the level of support of the SDP.

A tally published on Thursday by political research group Infratest dimap shows the CDU/CSU polling at 33% with the SPD trailing behind at 14%, level with the Greens.