The Left's electoral success: Red Berlin
In Berlin they actually have. With 19.9 percent of the second votes, the party has become the strongest force - for the first time ever. It is a turning point for the city and for the party, whose predecessor, the PDS, dominated the eastern part for a long time but had only a few strongholds in the west. 35 years after reunification, this boundary has fallen: With Neukölln, the Left has conquered the first old western constituency in its history - nationwide. It is an event of historic dimensions - on a par with the direct mandate won for the Greens in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg for the first time in 2002 by Hans-Christian Ströbele.
The fact that Pascal Meiser from the Left has now conquered this Green bastion for the Left is also a sign of a fundamental shift to the left - at least within the center-left spectrum. The fact that the Greens and the SPD were not the bulwark against the shift to the right in the federal government and in the election campaign, that both partly fueled a discourse that sees migration primarily as a problem, all of this has opened up space for the Left.
In particular, many former Green voters who considered themselves left-wing were driven to the Left. The SPD, which hardly anyone knows what it stands for anymore, has slipped to fifth place in Berlin, even behind the AfD. The Left has probably slowed down the AfD's rise. Nowhere in Germany was its growth smaller than in Berlin.
All of this would have been unimaginable just three months ago. As a reminder: Klaus Lederer, by far the most prominent Berlin state politician, left the party in disgrace , along with a handful of other veterans. The party, further weakened by the split of the Wagenknecht wing, was on its knees. In a survey on the parliamentary elections in November, five percent of Berliners surveyed said they wanted to vote for the Left. The party's survival, even in its stronghold of Berlin, seemed anything but certain. One could also say: It was almost clinically dead.
Its resurrection can not only be understood against the background of the federal political framework of a migration election campaign including Merz's dam break - it is also the result of an election campaign in which the party did a lot of things right. The focus on social issues - rents, prices, redistribution - made it recognizable and left no room for internal party disputes, for which there is less potential anyway due to the departures. It successfully worked on its image as a caring party, offering social consultation hours and rent and heating cost calculators.
She also shook off her old-fashioned image with a cutting-edge online election campaign. Lead candidate Reichinnek had a wide reach, and many others followed suit. Gregor Gysi, who won his ninth direct mandate in a row in Treptow-Köpenick with more than 40 percent, answered questions about his skin care in Tiktok videos or joked with DJ Gysi, a masked man who sets Gysi's speech snippets to music with electronic music. Gysi said on Monday: "I know that I'm a master at Tiktok now, but I don't know what I'm doing."
That was already enough for the Left to win the U18 election - and now it's also winning the big ones. Young people in particular have been flocking to the Left recently. In Berlin alone, membership has increased from more than 7,000 people to 12,700 since the start of the year, and tens of thousands have flocked to the party nationwide.
But the basis for the victories in Neukölln and Lichtenberg, where party leader Ines Schwerdtner dismantled AfD noblewoman Beatrix von Storch, was a door-to-door campaign that had never been seen in this form before. In Neukölln, 2,000 volunteers from all over the country knocked on two thirds of all doors there - in the end, there was hardly anyone who didn't know Koçak. The newly elected candidate recounts in passing at his election party how he was surrounded by a class of elementary school children who recognized him and wanted autographs. 17 percent more first votes and the strongest party after the second votes is the result of a real hype that the Neukölln campaigners got caught up in. This was also evident at the Neukölln Left Party's election party, for which there were no more tickets available after 800 registrations. Later, everyone sang "Bella Ciao" together.
In Lichtenberg, Schwerdtner and her many supporters also managed to knock on every second door. Nationwide, there were 630,000 door-to-door calls, she reported on Monday - about half of which were probably from Berliners. With the "massive campaign effort", she was "particularly pleased to have chased Beatrix von Storch off the farm", said Schwerdtner. The fact that Lichtenberg was retained, where the PDS and the Left had always won the direct mandate, is of particular value to the party.
The day after the election, at the press conference of the Berlin Left, there are flowers for the four constituency winners, but also for Katalin Gennburg and Stella Merendino, who are entering the Bundestag via the state list.
Gennburg has been an active member of her party in the House of Representatives so far, but missed out on a direct mandate in Marzahn-Hellersdorf, where the AfD won. Merendino is a nurse and on Tuesday she "actually had to work early shifts" but now she had to tell her boss that there was already a parliamentary group meeting, she said at the press conference on Monday. Merendino narrowly missed a sensational victory in Mitte - "completely crazy," she said.
The state chairman Maximilian Schirmer also interpreted the Bundestag result as a setback for the government at the state level: "The black-red Senate has been punished with its policy of social devastation." With its austerity policy, it has "turned the city against itself."
And now the Left, which is still reeling, is being asked questions about a possible victory in the parliamentary elections, which are due to take place again next year. The party is "very well prepared," said Schirmer, and is already in the middle of working on a left-wing vision of the future. Perhaps in Berlin that will again be red-red-green - in whatever order. On Sunday, 51.8 percent voted for the three parties. Berlin remains a left-wing city after all.
taz
