February 24, 2025 - 11:45am
When Sahra Wagenknecht left Die Linke (The Left), she wanted to destroy her former party. But in the end, it was Die Linke that showed her up.
Her new party, the eponymous Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), has narrowly failed to enter the German parliament, winning 4.97% of the vote in yesterday’s federal election. Because of the closeness of the result, Wagenknecht has proposed a recount.
The BSW fell short by 0.03% of the vote — or about 13,000 people out of 50 million. Because it failed, there are more seats for the other parties, meaning a grand coalition between the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) is possible. The difference between an unstable three-party coalition and a firmer two-party coalition ruling Europe’s largest economy came down to fewer votes than some British MPs’ majorities. By contrast, Die Linke — thought until just weeks ago to be heading out of parliament — celebrated an 11th-hour surge, storming into the Bundestag with nearly 9% of the vote.
What went wrong for the BSW? By the time the snap election was called in November, the party had been racking up success after success. Just six months after its creation, it won 6% of the vote in the European elections last June. Three months later, it won representation in three state parliaments, entering government in two.
It seemed a given that Wagenknecht would enter the Bundestag. Her brand of self-styled “Left-wing conservatism”, combining scepticism about immigration with Russia-friendly foreign policy, may not have been mainstream but it resonated with enough voters to make her a serious force.
But the BSW was caught off guard by the snap election. The party lacked local infrastructure and was short on cash for the campaign. It was forced to hurriedly register regional branches in order to participate in the national election.
If the party lacked its more established opponents’ ground game, it also became increasingly irrelevant as the campaign wore on. A series of terror attacks committed by refugees and asylum seekers focused the debate on migration. Recriminations over CDU leader Friedrich Merz’s decision to weaken the “firewall” by seeking Alternative for Germany (AfD) votes for a resolution on immigration only confirmed the far-Right’s centrality to the new political reality.
In that context, Wagenknecht’s offer of slightly more respectable anti-migrant populism than the AfD fell flat. Her unapologetically Russia-friendly foreign policy was also overtaken by events, with US President Donald Trump quickly initiating an anti-European turn in America’s foreign policy. When the most powerful man in the world is threatening to impose so-called “peace” in Ukraine on the Kremlin’s terms, why bother voting for a minor German party running on a platform of pro-Russian foreign policy?
Wagenknecht may also have overestimated her own personal appeal. Personality-driven parties have a poor record in German politics, and it doesn’t get much more personal than naming the party after yourself. The BSW leader was relatively absent from the campaign train — a critical weakness for a party so closely associated with her.
Ironically, Wagenknecht leaving Die Linke may also have made her former party more electable. By ridding Die Linke of many of its most reflexively pro-Russian members, the party became more appealing to young people, whose support was key to its success.
Die Linke’s surge was largely thanks to a speech made earlier this year by leader Heidi Reichinnek, which sharply criticised Merz for seeking AfD votes for a resolution on immigration, a first for postwar Germany. “I want to tell people: don’t give up, stand up and resist fascism,” Reichinnek said in the speech, which garnered tens of millions of views on social media. It may not have had the same effect if the party were still stuffed with its most vocal Russian apologists.
What next for Wagenknecht? During the campaign, she pledged to retire from politics if her party didn’t enter the Bundestag. But other parties also failed to enter parliament on the first try — including the AfD, now the second-strongest force in German politics.
The BSW has a solid base in state parliaments and in Brussels. Having failed to enter the Bundestag by a rounding error, it will be reflecting on how to capitalise on its still-significant influence. Wagenknecht is certainly putting a brave face on it. At her election party at a communist-era cinema last night, the East German-born politician pledged: “This is not the end.” If she wants any inspiration for a political comeback, she need only look at her former party.
Ido Vock is a reporter and editor based in Berlin, specialising in Europe’s politics and economy. He was previously a senior journalist at the BBC and Europe correspondent at the New Statesman.
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SubscribeThis wasn’t so much a failure to convince voters but a series of mistakes made by a young party and a deliberate defamation campaign by the established powers. There is a stronger fear in Germany of somebody who challenges the official Russia narrative than of right wingers who are mixed up with some unsavoury Nazi-leaning people.
But in both cases the establishment has weaponised populist stereotypes of dangers from the left and from the right.
I am glad that Wagenknecht considers a challenge of the electoral vote counting. There were irregularities before and that needs to be brought out into the light.
Perhaps the voters felt that BSW was AfD in disguise and would prefer honesty?
If you’re so intellectually lazy and myopic in your prism of neoliberalism that you think there’s no distinction between parties but their stances on migration that’s your problem. How are the likes of you and jwatson even on Unherd?
Wagenknecht hearkens back to what the left used to be, unfortunately since there is no REAL Leftwing politics in the West anymore (for those wondering: pro workers rights, anti-corporate, pro-peace & state directed economic policies) so it doesn’t resonate with the wider German public (the opposite really).
She gets a very raw deal in the media generally and gets attacked from all sides for her idiosyncratic (though not inconsistent views). Her basic argument against immigration is that migrants push prices prices up and wages down and should therefore be controlled. She also takes an autonomist view of Europe, which is ironically where Merz claims to be heading, though as part of the existing elite & corporatist regime (the CDU might be disappointed, but Blackrock certainly isn’t), as opposed to an actually independent European path (which would have to accommodate Russia because that’s just the reality of the situation Germany is in).
She defies the left-right split in a way I find genuinely interesting, but unfortunately I don’t really think Germany is well suited to that kind of politics, in particular because Germany is very much built as an construct of the neo-liberal world order and it’s citizens are incapable of grasping the new world that’s upon them.
Thank you for the insightful response. I only wish we could think of having a party like the BSW in the US. We are so limited. I am always impressed with multiparty democracy in Europe.
You’re very welcome!
Unfortunately the breadth of tolerated opinions is still very narrow in Europe and closely tied to the framework of American/western hegemony so even though new parties can be founded, it’s actually very hard to go beyond “the blob”. The difference is that it encompasses a multitude of parties here (and generally only far-right parties gain traction as alternatives), as opposed to being established within the two existing parties in America.
Europe might very well go through it’s own century of humiliation with leadership like this.