Edmund Stoiber - Chancellor Candidacy

Chancellor Candidacy

In 2002, Stoiber politically outmaneuvered CDU chairwoman, Angela Merkel, and was elected the CDU/CSU's candidate for the office of chancellor, challenging Gerhard Schröder.

In the run up to the 2002 election the CSU/CDU held a huge lead in the opinion polls and Stoiber famously remarked that "...this election is like a football match where it's the second half and my team is ahead by 2–0." However, on election day things had changed. The SPD had mounted a huge comeback, and the CDU/CSU was narrowly defeated (though both the SPD and CDU/CSU had 38.5% of the vote, the SPD was ahead by a small 6,000 vote margin). Gerhard Schröder was re-elected as chancellor by the parliament in a coalition with the Greens. Many commentators fault Stoiber's reaction to the floods in eastern Germany, in the run-up to the election, as a contributory factor in his party's poor electoral result and defeat. In addition, Schröder distinguished himself from his opponent by taking an active stance against the upcoming United States-led Iraq War. His extensive campaigning on this stance was widely seen as swinging the election to the SPD in the weeks running up to the election.