Jochen Ott confirmed as SPD lead candidate for North Rhine-Westphalia with 96 percent delegate vote
Jochen Ott has been formally selected as the SPD’s lead candidate for the April 2027 North Rhine-Westphalia state election, winning 96.2 percent of delegates’ votes at a party conference in Düsseldorf. He will challenge incumbent Minister-President Hendrik Wüst (CDU) as the SPD tries to reverse a prolonged polling slump.
The vote
Delegates gathered in Düsseldorf on Friday handed the 52-year-old faction leader a near-unanimous mandate. Ott received 204 of 218 valid votes, with seven voting no and one abstention; six ballots were spoiled. The result translates to 96.2 percent support, placing him at the top of the SPD’s state list for the election due in April 2027.
I am ready to fight with you. Let us do it together, we can manage it, dear comrades!
The conference effectively fires the starting pistol on a campaign the SPD has chosen to begin early, more than ten months before voters go to the polls.
An opposition leader confronting dire polls
Ott has led the SPD’s Landtag group since 2023 and sits as opposition leader against the black-green coalition of Minister-President Wüst. Recent surveys put the SPD at 14 to 18 percent, well behind the CDU’s 32 to 34 percent. The gap echoes the 2022 state election, when the SPD slid to 26.7 percent while the CDU took 35.7 percent. The party, once dominant in Germany’s most populous state, last governed there between 2010 and 2017 under Hannelore Kraft before losing to Armin Laschet (CDU).
For the federal SPD, the stakes are high: North Rhine-Westphalia is its largest state branch, and a poor showing would send a grim signal to Berlin ahead of the next Bundestag election.
Ott’s demands on Berlin
Ahead of the vote, Ott used a radio interview to press the national SPD-led coalition for more visible ambition. He argued the constant talk of cuts was demoralising voters.
It is not possible to tell people from Monday to Friday that cuts and savings have to be made everywhere. If you want to achieve confidence and economic growth, you have to motivate people and take them along with you.
He urged the federal government to present a joint reform proposal swiftly and to communicate with “more passion.” The engagement between unions and employers was, he said, a step in the right direction, but the coalition now needed to “step on the gas.”
The candidate and the path ahead
A Cologne-based education policy specialist, Ott has been a member of the Landtag since 2010. He set himself the task of sharpening the SPD’s profile and building “a social counterweight to the state government.” Yet he remains largely unknown to the broader public, and raising his name recognition is one of the campaign’s immediate challenges.
Should he win, Ott promised a relief package for families. The SPD’s early move to nominate him is partly an attempt to create momentum while the party’s national position remains under strain.
