cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/79963
Germany’s Left Party on Sunday made history by winning the 2026 Berlin state election, putting its lead candidate, socialist Elif Eralp, in position to become mayor of the country’s largest city.
In all, the Left Party won 26% of the overall vote in the election, with the center-right Christian Democratic Union capturing 19% and the far-right Alternative for Germany winning 16% of the vote.
The two other center-left parties—the Greens and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)—won 14% and 12% of the vote, respectively.
A Sunday report from Bloomberg News described the Left Party’s victory in Berlin as a “Mamdani moment,” in reference to democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s upset 2025 win in the New York City mayoral race.
Like Mamdani, Eralp and her party put affordability at the center of their campaign, with a particular emphasis on the rising cost of housing in the city.
As described by Euronews in a Monday report, Eralp “called for tighter regulation of rents, more social housing, and further moves towards bringing large housing portfolios into public ownership.”
The Euronews report also noted the connection to Mamdani, citing a quote from Eralp last year arguing that “if a left-wing candidate can win in New York, then there’s no reason it can’t happen in Berlin.”
According to a Saturday report in The Washington Post, the Left Party recently sent a delegation to New York City to learn about Mamdani’s campaign and even met with some of the mayor’s advisers to talk political strategy.
Liza Pflaum, the head of digital communications for the Left Party and a member of the delegation, told the Post that while her party had already embraced “a clear focus on issues relevant to affordable living” two years ago, it also was “explicitly inspired… by Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.”
While the Left Party received the most votes in the election, it did not receive enough to form an outright majority, meaning it will need coalition partners to form a government.
The Greens and SPD have indicated they are willing to form a coalition with the Left Party, but have claimed the party has allowed antisemitism to flourish in its ranks—an allegation that conservatives have made against left-wing candidates and political leaders in the US as well.
Progressives have warned against the conflation of antisemitism and criticism of Israel.
Eralp has disputed accusations of antisemitism in her party, which have focused on comments about the Israel Defense Forces at a campaign event and the presence of “an allegedly militant activist” at an election victory party.
“I will do everything to ensure that Jewish people—just like Muslims, queer people, and everyone in our city—can feel safe,” said Eralp.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Calls herself a socialist when her name is an anagram for “Pearl Life,” smh
tired: champagne socialist
wired: pearl girl
Small rays of hope in a dark age.
My housemate got the Berlin results confused with the Mecklenburg results and it nearly gave me a heart attack.
OVERALL: The biggest factor, by a large factor, is age. But, economic situation and type of employment, (whatever those categories mean) are also a big deal. Gender is still important, but the least important out of everything here. Lastly, not having LGBT or ethnic data here is frustrating
The big scary here is that while Left/SPD/Green can form a coalition, so can CDU/SPD/Green. I don’t know enough about German politics to know if that’s likely but it is concerning that the libs could essentially take power back if the left does too much cool stuff
The new party, BSW, aka left but no pronouns got 4.7 percent of the votes, missing out on council seats by 0.3 percent the fucking dweebs. Splitters get the shitter
CDU lost 1/3 of its votes SPD lost 1/3 of its votes Green Lost 1/4 of its votes Left Doubled its total AFD almost doubled its total
EDIT: Wikipedia already compiled all this shit
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/d0c2ef79-a283-4b56-aca9-7a70b1ca46a1.png
Men
23% left 25% Freikorps (SPD+Greens) and 39% conservative (CDU+AFD)
Women:
28% left 28% Freikorps 31% conservative
25-34 Age Group
49% left 18% Freikorps 15% Conservative
60-69 Age Group
16% left 27% Freikorps 47% conservative
AFD decisively won the no college degree crowd with 27%, dropping to 10% amongst people with degrees. The left got 17.5% and 30% in the same categories.
AFD does best in the 45 - 69 age group, with the 70+ preferring the more moderate options,
Gender is still important, but the least important out of everything here.
It generally becomes a lot more relevant when you cluster gender and age - probably because younger people have much more gendered online media environments, but women under 30 generally skew notably more to the left than men in the same age cohort, whereas in older age groups women are slightly more conservative on average. The latter not by much, but age distribution in Germany means older cohorts weigh in more heavily, so this evens out a lot of the differences.
Lastly, not having LGBT or ethnic data here is frustrating
Yeah, but then we’re getting into often disproportionally small samples of often already very small subgroups that are then split between a wide array of parties and it all gets fucky, especially when you also want to account for intersections with class, employment status, age cohort, education etc.
I’ve seen a fairly large-sized study about queer party and political preferences in Germany some time ago, i think by the LSVD+, and while that’s over two years old and will have changed since then, queer voting habits are extremely different from the straights, which fully checks out with my personal observations. Especially among trans people, the Linke tends to be the strongest party, Greens are also massively overrepresented because being queer doesn’t automatically make you a good person, but often makes you think you are entitled to be one and if the Greens aren’t bad enough already there’s a small but notable group of Volt fans (i unfortunately know some of these personally, they are incredibly annoying), some SPD boomers - and almost nobody gives a fuck about the CDU. The AfD mostly hovered around 1% except among cis gay men and even there, it was only about 7%. But from my - unfortunately also personal - experience, gay CDU and AfD supporters are ridiculously vocal about their shit takes and because they hang out with rich white straight people all the time they often have a platform to yell at everybody how normal they are and how much they hate muslims and how you’re an antisemite if you point out how cringe this all is.
Plare File
Thats who the afd is running
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