For all the alarm about the instability of German politics, the results of this month’s federal election campaign seem – on the surface – largely baked in. The conservative CDU party, led by the bullish Friedrich Merz, is expected to win, with approximately 30 per cent of the vote. The far-right Elon Musk-loving Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is predicted to come second with around 21 per cent.
But dive deeper, and the polls show that German politics is still very much in flux. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD party is fighting for third place with the Greens. And there are three parties which may well fail to meet the 5 per cent threshold needed to enter the Bundestag. Even small changes in the popular vote could end up defining the governing coalition Friedrich Merz – pipped to become the next chancellor – is able to cobble together in the ensuing months.
The gradual decline in the BSW’s polling numbers began after the American election result
One of the three parties struggling to reach the 5 per cent threshold is the far-left Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) founded just 13 months ago by Sahra Wagenknecht, a defector from the Left party. The party is currently polling at just over 4 per cent – down from 9 per cent at its peak in September. This is a humbling decline for the party.
What went wrong? Over the past year, the BSW has positioned itself as the anti-Ukraine party, capitalising on anxieties around Putin’s invasion of the country and fears that the conflict could creep West. Combining economically left-wing policies, such as greater welfare benefits funded by taxes on the rich, with culturally right-wing ones, including a crackdown on migration and the deportation of illegal migrants, the party also managed for a time to present itself as a non-extremist alternative to the AfD.
Both parties have to a large extent been targeting the same pool of voters. Like the AfD, the BSW is strongest in the former East Germany, polling as high as 14 per cent in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. In this part of the country, the party has done its best to capitalise on Sahra Wagenknecht’s own ‘Ossi’ background. I met with John Lucas Dittrich, regional chairman of the party for Saxony-Anhalt, who points out that: ‘She is an East German and comes from East Germany. That is also what a lot of people associate with her. And they also know that with her we are the only party that has an East German as its top candidate.’
It’s also in East Germany that the party’s anti-Nato messaging and calls to drop sanctions against Russia have resonated most. European sanctions on Russia have been disruptive to East German industry, which has been particularly vulnerable to export bans and rising energy costs. Detractors accuse the BSW of appeasing Putin – but the party argues instead that they are challenging what they see as the government’s unnecessary encouragement of a bloody conflict.
‘We are counting on the German government to do more to promote dialogue. A dialogue between Ukraine and Russia, but also with Russia,’ says Dittrich. ‘The sanctions have not weakened Putin’s ability to wage this war, but have primarily harmed us instead.’ The news, then, on Wednesday that Trump and Putin have agreed to begin peace negotiations ‘immediately’ was welcomed by Wagenknecht. It was, however, a ‘major failure’ on Europe and Germany’s part not to have presented ‘a realistic plan for bringing about a ceasefire and subsequent peace negotiations’ sooner, she said.
These policies stood the party in good stead last year. The BSW had considerable success in September’s state elections, held in three former East German states, and entered government coalitions in Brandenburg and Thuringia.
And yet now the BSW is set to fail its first national test. There are several reasons why this might be the case. Intriguingly, there is some indication that Donald Trump’s election to the White House in November, and his continued suggestion that he can achieve a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv, has taken the sting out of the BSW’s headline anti-Ukraine campaign messaging. The gradual decline in their polling numbers began after the American election result.
Along with the AfD, the party has been banned from attending this weekend’s Munich Security Conference – reportedly for snubbing the gathering’s core principle of ‘peace through dialogue’ by walking out on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech in the Bundestag last summer. For both the AfD and BSW, who present themselves as underdogs rising up to challenge the establishment, being banned from Munich is nothing short of a gift.
But while the AfD’s popularity has continued to grow thanks to its ability to dominate the debate over migration, the BSW has struggled to make its similarly hardline (albeit, they would argue, less racially-motivated) migration stance stand out.
Wagenknecht herself blames a mainstream media bias against the party. But the BSW has also struggled with some of the practicalities of winter campaigning. The party is just over a year old; it has a relatively small number of party officials and an even smaller pool of money. The snap federal election took the party somewhat by surprise, and stretched resources means it has been limited in how many indoor venues it has been able to afford to stage campaign events. Wagenknecht herself only has nine such events in her campaign schedule. Some in the party have criticised their leader for failing to capitalise more on her personal brand in order to raise funds and support.
As for Wagenknecht herself, she has staked her future as leader of the BSW on the party’s performance in the federal election. ‘Anyone who is not in the Bundestag is no longer a relevant factor in German politics,’ she says. The BSW doesn’t have long, then, before it finds out if it’s brand of far-left populism has any relevance at all in Germany.
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