The recent German federal elections resulted in clear gains for the far-right, but also some hope for the left after a defiant fight-back from Die Linke. In this article, international coordinator for SFI, Felicity Garvie, considers the significance of the results and what the left can take from them.
It’s not good news from Germany. The election results have followed the all-too-familiar pattern that we’re used to, from Austria and the Netherlands to Sweden, where mainstream parties have lost significant chunks of their votes to hard-right, anti-immigrant ones.
The biggest party, the Conservative CDU, achieved 28.4% of the vote, its second worst vote in the past 30 years, and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) received its worst vote ever with 16.4%, relegating it to third place behind the extreme right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which doubled its vote to 20.8%. It’s estimated that the main parties haemorrhaged over 2 million votes to the AfD, who in turn were able to mobilise two million non-voters. The turnout was 83%.
In the weeks before the election, several immigrant-led attacks on crowds in cities – including a car driven into a Christmas market in Magdeburg killing six and injuring hundreds – would have been grist to the mill of the AfD. But they were already publicly calling for the ‘remigration’ of all immigrants and shutting the borders.
A divided country
The new electoral map of Germany shows a country almost divided down the middle. The AfD swept the board in former East Germany. There are historic reasons for this, but generally, since reunification in 1989, eastern Germany has not levelled up with the prosperous West and people there feel ‘left behind’ and not taken seriously by successive governments. In the West, the CDU reigns, with a few red and green patches in the industrial heartlands.
But it’s not all bad news. Socialists internationally can take heart from the success of the socialist Left party (Die Linke) which doubled its vote to 8.8%, even achieving 20% in Berlin and gaining 64 seats in the German Parliament. When the AfD supported a (thankfully non-binding) anti-immigration vote by the CDU in parliament in early February, 700,000 people poured onto the streets across Germany to protest which also galvanised many young people.
One in four young people aged 18-24 voted for ‘Die Linke’ and 23,000 new members, many of them women, joined in the election run-up. The party’s membership now stands at 100,000.
The left fight back
While Die Linke were the only party to take a pro-immigration stance, their election campaign concentrated on cost of living issues, high rents, rising energy prices and the housing crisis. They proposed tax breaks for those on low incomes while proposing tax increases on billionaires at 75% – a rate which would result in €50 billion more for the treasury. They reached millions on social media and carried out 500,000 home visits between last September and election day.
Independent commentators also said that the party had the best environmental programme, even considering the position of the Green party. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that the Greens lost 6% of their 2021 vote, having been in the previous coalition and having very little to show for it.
Where next for Germany?
The world’s third biggest economy is in trouble. It is entering its third year of recession, the car industry is facing tens of thousands of job losses, energy prices and rents have sky-rocketed and its formerly world-leading trains are now apparently worse than the UK’s! The CDU’s leader, Friedrich Merz, has already signalled massive increases in the military budget, funded by billions of cuts in social services, and a rolling back of climate policies. This could lay the ground for AfD to become the biggest party in the 2029 election, unless effective, mass opposition is mobilised now.
“It’s our task to build the party with lots of new members and give it a structure that’s ready for action. We need to be rooted in our communities and workplaces in order to shift the conversation left, thereby helping to build real opposition. Only then will we really have power”
Felicity Garvie
Fiz Garvie is a founding member and international coordinator of SFI. She lived in Germany for 18 years before returning to Scotland in 1996.