"To the barricades!": The keys to the surprising resurgence of the German left

BerlinAgainst all odds, the Left Party (Die Linke, in German) not only managed to regain representation in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament, in last Sunday's elections, but it won 8.7% of the vote, almost doubling the 4.9% it won in the 2021 election. "The Left is back," its co-chair Jan van Aken proclaimed on election night after achieving "the comeback of the year."

The leaders of this left-wing populist party could not have hoped for such an election result in their wildest dreams. They feared until the very end that the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a splinter group from Die Linke, would steal votes from them. In the end, it was BSW that was left out of the Bundestag, failing to surpass the 5% threshold needed to win a seat by 13,400 votes.

The Left, which won 64 seats, surprisingly won the elections in Berlin, where it obtained 19.9% of the votes, a record for this far-left party founded in 2007 and heir to the Communist Party (SED) of East Germany.

Die Linke, which many political analysts thought was dead a few weeks ago, is part of the Left group in the European Parliament, together with France Insoumise, the Five Star Movement, Podemos, Sumar and EH Bildu.

The reasons for the success

Thanks to the victory of Die Linke, Berlin appears on the electoral maps of the German elections as a red island. The country is divided in two:The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won in former communist Germany, while the conservative CDU-CSU won elsewhere.

The Left's success in this election is due, among other things, to a very active election campaign on social media, combined with effective door-to-door campaigning and a viral speech by its candidate for chancellor.

Under the slogan "Everyone wants to govern. We want change", the Left's campaign focused on issues such as social justice, peace, affordable housing, lower prices, better wages and decent pensions. "If your rent is too high, the landlord is happy", "If your purchase is too expensive, a group cashes in" and "If your pension is too low, Scholz has not delivered" read some of the election banners of this anti-capitalist and pacifist party.

The Left demands a ban on tiered rents and the introduction of a nationwide rent cap. These themes have won them votes especially among young people and in big cities, such as Berlin, in the face of rising housing prices.

Die Linke, the new alternative of the German left

The rise of the far right in Germany and the Conservatives flirt with ultras during the campaign The CDU/CSU have also contributed to the success of Die Linke. Hundreds of thousands of Germans took to the streets to protest against any collaboration with the far right after the conservative candidate had succeeded in passing a non-binding motion with the AdF to limit asylum rights. Two days later, however, the CDU/CSU lost a vote that would have become law to reduce immigration. This time, too, it had the support of the far right.

"To the barricades!" shouted Heidi Reichinnek, Die Linke's candidate for chancellor, in German at the end of January in a speech in the lower house against Merz that went viral on social media. Reichinnek, who has a tattoo of the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg on her arm, has earned the nickname "the red queen of the Bundestag."

"Friedrich Merz is the new honorary president "The Left Party is still in a state of flux in November and December, which we have rarely seen in Germany in such a short period of time," said the German political analyst Wolfgang Schröder.

The Left Party's success in the elections was also helped by the strong decline of Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD) after three years in power. LT_LNA~