A year before the state elections in Bavaria, SPD state chairwoman Ronja Endres set the goal of assuming government responsibility in the state. "We want to govern," Endres said on Saturday at a state party conference in Munich. "We have the courage to take responsibility, even and especially in difficult times." In a year the SPD will finally get the chance "not only to demand social policy for Bavaria, but also to implement it".

However, according to current polls, the incumbent coalition of CSU and Free Voters can still count on a clear majority.

At the party conference, the state and parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn is to be officially nominated as the top candidate. This is considered a formality - the state board had suggested him for it. Chancellor Olaf Scholz was also expected as a prominent guest.

The Bavarian Social Democrats should hope for a tailwind for the Bavarian elections in autumn 2023 from Scholz and the SPD-led federal government. In the Free State, the SPD has been struggling for many years. In the 2018 state election, it fell to 9.7 percent. The federal elections last year at least brought a small interim high - the SPD got 18 percent in Bavaria. In several state election surveys, the Social Democrats did not get past a maximum of ten percent, far behind the CSU and also behind the Greens.