The Left | After 15 years it should go back to the state parliament

Sebastian Merkens and Alexandra Mehdi are expected to lead Die Linke into the state parliament in 2026. Photo: Die Linke NRW / Jan Saueressig 17 years ago, Die Linke was elected to the Düsseldorf state parliament. It remained a short episode. In the new elections in 2012 she was thrown out of the state parliament again. In the following state elections she more or less narrowly failed. Next spring, the move into the state parliament should work again. The signs for this are good. In the 2025 federal election, the party received 8.3 percent of the second votes in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the local elections a few months later, the national average was 5.6 percent.

We are a pole of hope for a society that has often lost hope for a good future for everyone.

For a successful election campaign, you first need content that the party has developed in a program process lasting several months. The result is a 250-page draft program that was discussed at a party conference in Mülheim an der Ruhr at the weekend. In advance, members had submitted over 500 requests for changes and additions, the majority of which could be incorporated into the draft program after video conferences. However, the delegates in Mülheim still had around 50 proposals left that needed to be discussed.

Thematically, what was still to be discussed was quite diverse. For example, it was a question of whether the formulation that one is in favor of a "well-equipped police force" suggests that they should be upgraded or what space foot traffic should take up in the program. There was also debate about the question of how much historical derivation left-wing anti-fascism requires.

The focus of the election program is on proposals such as “making life in North Rhine-Westphalia affordable again,” explains the designated top candidate Alexandra Mehdi in an interview with “nd”. Mehdi lists topics: »Is the bus running? Do I have an affordable apartment? Can I get a daycare place?" It's about the "core of the social question" and no one in the Düsseldorf state parliament is currently asking that question. Sebastian Merkens adds that we are currently experiencing a strengthening of the right and at the same time "a defenselessness of those who are currently in political power." This creates great hopelessness. Successes like that of Zohran Mamdani in New York stand against this hopelessness. The Left in North Rhine-Westphalia is also a “pole of hope for a society that has often lost hope for a good future for everyone.”

Alexandra Mehdi and Sebastian Merkens were proposed by the state executive committee of the Left as top candidates for the state elections in the spring. Mehdi has worked for MEP Özlem Alev Demirel for many years and is active in feminist contexts in the party. Merkens has been state manager since 2022, as such he had to maintain and reorganize the party structure during the BSW crisis, which was particularly large in North Rhine-Westphalia. A task that he succeeded in. With 25,000 members, the party in North Rhine-Westphalia is in better shape than ever before. This is also a reason for optimism regarding the state elections. After the federal and local elections last year, structures were built across the country. There are now party offices everywhere. Merkens and Mehdi believe that they can “set a lot in motion” in the coming election campaign.

The top duo will be elected in mid-October. Then Die Linke NRW meets in Hagen for the constellation meeting. 40 people want to be elected to the list for the state parliament. A left-wing parliamentary group is likely to be relatively diverse and made up of people with very different levels of experience. Mehdi and Merkens are likely to lead such a faction less with loud words than with organizational talent and a broad political horizon.

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