Berlin Left Party: Did (almost) everything right

The Left Party's success in the House of Representatives election has a clear starting point. “Left in the Left Camp Top” was the title of the taz on June 19, 2025, in a text about new survey results. For seven years, the party had not been ahead of the SPD or the Greens. Since then, only one thing has changed in this political pole position - with the exception of three surveys in the spring in which the SPD was narrowly ahead -: the distance to the other two parties.

But the situation is completely new this Sunday evening, on which the Left Party is celebrating its success in the Kreuzberg festival hall - according to the first projection at 6:30 p.m., shortly before the editorial deadline, the party is leading by 4 to 5 percentage points ahead of the second-placed CDU, the SPD is far behind. This has never happened before. The Left Party has never been ahead in a House of Representatives election, not even within the left-wing camp - and the last time it had over 20 percent was in 2002, when it was still called the PDS.

A few reasons for the Left Party's success can be clearly identified: It has made some very right decisions. With the rent crisis and expropriation, it has made an issue so much its own that similar efforts by the Greens only seemed like a copy to which the original was preferable. It played on this issue so loudly and with populist overtones that an attempt at a solution by the SPD, which was difficult to explain, including a “no” to expropriation, hardly had a chance.

And she has put forward the right top candidate in Elif Eralp. She also impressed political opponents during the election campaign and, despite her intelligence and qualifications as a top-notch lawyer, was also able to make simpler and pointed statements - “Incriminate millionaires in order to relieve millions”. There is a starting point for this too: It was on January 30, 2025, when the then largely unknown MP and specialist politician Eralp from the back benches of the left-wing faction went to the lectern to make an interim statement.

They, and not the parliamentary group leadership of Anne Helm and Tobias Schulze, demanded a reaction from the SPD to the joint vote by the CDU and AfD in the Bundestag shortly before. “Raed, can you continue to govern with this CDU?” she shouted to the SPD parliamentary group leader Saleh: “Dear SPD, break the coalition with the CDU and let us form an anti-fascist coalition.” The appeal had no consequences. But already on the way back to the fourth row of the group, the impression could arise: Eralp's place is no longer on the back benches.

From an election campaign perspective, it was also right not to act as decisively as the CDU and Greens had demanded against anti-Semitic tendencies in their own ranks, which particularly attracted the attention of the Neukölln district association. Eralp decided to distance himself from anti-Semitic statements. A sentence like “Such people have no place in my party” was never heard from her, at least not documented to the outside world. It could also have cost significant votes from the pro-Palestine camp.

Strategically, however, that could have been the only big mistake in the election campaign. Anyone who listened more closely to the SPD and the Greens in the past few weeks could detect certain disengagement movements. SPD top candidate Steffen Krach considers the Left to be “unfit to govern” because of the anti-Semitic incidents.

And Green Party top candidate Werner Graf specifically outlined when he would not enter into a left-wing alliance: The government should not be dependent on the Neukölln district association. Which means: Red-Green-Red would have to get a majority in the state parliament without the Left Party MPs there. What could certainly happen if the numbers from the first projection ultimately prove to be tenable.

Regardless, the new leadership role in the left camp will not change any time soon. Of course there will be protests and disappointments if Eralp has to implement a budget with billions in cuts - and presumably from the same people who previously believed that the Left Party had a printing press somewhere in the basement to make up for the missing money.

But because the Left Party would not govern alone, but with two left-wing junior partners, voters disappointed with it would have no alternative - except to become non-voters or to look for the way to the AfD. It would make little sense to go (back) from the Left Party to the Greens or SPD, who are equally responsible for unavoidable cuts in Parliament and the Senate.

Participation in government could therefore be bearable. What is remembered, however, is that every time the Left Party took part in government in Berlin, it did worse in the next election than in the previous one. This was strongest after the first red-red coalition with SPD member Klaus Wowereit as head of government: it slipped from almost 23 percent to 13.4. In the most recent election in 2023, it finished behind with 12.2 percent, behind the Social Democrats and the Greens, who were both tied at 18.4 percent at the time.

But even if the Left Party does not enter the government this time - either out of its own decision or because the Greens and the SPD don't want to - this is unlikely to weaken its leading role in the left camp, but rather strengthen it. Because anyone who doesn't understand billions in cuts and blames them on the Greens and SPD would have a clear alternative for their vote, in surveys or future elections, with a left-wing party as opposition leader.

Even if after this election evening, despite the Left Party's clear victory, it is unclear whether Eralp will actually be elected Governing Mayor through a red-green-red alliance, her success becomes even clearer in comparison with the last survey before Eralp's memorable appearance in the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2025. At that time, just 6 percent of voters supported them.