SOON AFTER Olaf Scholz defied the odds to win election as German chancellor in 2021, his jubilant party colleagues exulted over the coming “decade of social democracy”. Now he is set to fall having served barely a third of that. In the run-up to an election on February 23rd, polls give 16% to Mr Scholz’s Social Democrats (spd), placing them a distant third behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union, or cdu/csu (31%), and the hard-right Alternative for Germany (20%). Germany’s economy is in the doldrums, war and uncertainty stalk the land, and voters are anxious. Yet as the spd prepares to anoint Mr Scholz its candidate on January 11th, the chancellor’s camp think their man can pull it off again. “It’s going to be hard but there’s absolutely a chance,” says Dorothee Martin, an spd mp from Mr Scholz’s home town of Hamburg.