(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Green Party picked Franziska Brantner and Felix Banaszak as new co-chairs ahead of early federal elections scheduled for February.
Brantner, a state secretary in Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck’s economy ministry, won about 78% of the votes at a party congress in Wiesbaden on Saturday. Support for Banaszak was higher, at 93%.
They succeed Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour, who announced their resignation at the end of September, following crushing defeats for the Greens in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg state elections. The other two parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government — the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats — also performed poorly in those ballots, exacerbating tensions within the alliance.
The three-way coalition officially broke down last week, with a national election now on the agenda for Feb. 23. Habeck, who’s currently also Germany’s economy minister, will likely be the Greens’ lead candidate.
The party currently polls at 10%, the research institute INSA said on Saturday, trailing the conservative Christian Democrats, the far-right Alternative for Germany, and Scholz’s SPD.
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