German election will be test for Sahra Wagenknecht and BSW
Marcel Fürstenau
The former parliamentary leader of the Left party is seeking to enter the Bundestag with her BSW. But the party will need to make inroads in the western states where she has always performed weakest.

Last weekend's party conference in Bonn, western Germany, was extra special for the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW): The party will take part in its first federal election in February, and this was its chance to present its manifesto.

Founded in January 2024, the BSW made it through the dress rehearsal with flying colors: In September's elections in the eastern German states of Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia, the BSW took 12%-16% of the vote, eclipsing the socialist Left party from which it drew many of its state and federal parliamentarians.

Despite this, Wagenknecht is worried that the party bearing her name will fail to reach the 5% threshold in the early Bundestag elections. This is because only around 10 million of Germany's 59 million eligible voters live in the east, less than one-fifth of the electorate. In the west, support for the BSW is significantly lower.

This was already evident in the European elections in June, when the BSW received 6.2% of the German vote. The regional differences were huge: In eastern states, support ranged from roughly 13% to 16%, but in western states the BSW averaged well below 5%. Only in the small state of Saarland (1 million inhabitants) and in the city-state of Bremen (580,000 inhabitants) did it surpass this threshold.

The BSW is looking at similar figures in the upcoming Bundestag elections. According to the latest opinion polls, the BSW has no margin for error: Its poll ratings are hovering at the 5% mark necessary to enter the German parliament.

At the party conference in Bonn, BSW founder Wagenknecht blamed the weak poll results on a lack of media coverage. "I think it's pretty undemocratic," she told public broadcaster BR shortly before the convention.

But a look at the TV political talk shows on German broadcasters ARD and ZDF paints a different picture: With 12 appearances, Wagenknecht was the most frequently invited politician on these public broadcasters in 2024.

Despite the polls, the BSW leader appeared confident and combative in Bonn: She reminded members that they are a young party and still do not have a core constituency. Many people do not yet know who they want to vote for, Wagenknecht said. "We are only just getting started in this campaign." The party platform adopted at the convention will now lay the groundwork.

In this newly-minted manifesto, the BSW describes itself as the only "peace party" in the German Bundestag that is consistent in its opposition to the current buildup in arms as well as the supply of weapons into war zones.

That has, however, long been a core tenet of the socialist Left Party, on which Wagenknecht and many of her long-standing supporters have turned their backs.

The reason for the split was their opposing views on asylum and migration policy. While the Left Party is the only party represented in the Bundestag that opposes adopting stricter asylum policies, the BSW demands, among other things, that asylum procedures be carried out outside the European Union in so-called safe third countries and that criminal refugees be deported. 

In terms of its content and rhetoric, some passages in the BSW's electoral program resemble that of other parties, including the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party with far-right extremist elements.

The BSW program criticizes the "uncontrolled influx of people," and claims that little is known about the biographies of these immigrants or their willingness to integrate. "The naive policy of welcoming immigrants in recent years has already led to a disproportionate increase in knife crime, sexual offenses, and religiously-motivated terrorism," the BSW election manifesto claims.

On the question of how Russia's war in Ukraine should be ended, there is some overlap with the Left Party. The BSW wants a ceasefire without preconditions, and is warning against stumbling into a new arms race. "We must not prepare for war in the nuclear age," Wagenknecht said. "A new policy of de-escalation is needed. Wars are ended through negotiations."

Since the attack on Israel by the Islamist group Hamas on October 7, 2023, the BSW has described the Middle East as a "powder keg." It has said that all the major powers in the region are fighting their conflicts on the backs of the population.

"What began as Israel's self-defense against the Hamas massacre has long since turned into a ruthless campaign of revenge and extermination by the Netanyahu government against women and children in the Gaza Strip," its election manifesto reads.

The BSW also rejects increased military spending: "The narrative of the Bundeswehr being 'cut to the bone' is a myth. German military spending has more than doubled since 2014 and amounted to almost €90 billion ($92 billion) in 2024."

Germany has now reached the target agreed upon by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of investing 2% of its economic output in its defense budget.

If the BSW and its official chancellor candidate Sahra Wagenknecht had their way, Germany would disarm. It is questionable whether the new party will be able to commit to this in the next Bundestag, and if the BSW fails to enter the Bundestag at all, it would be a personal defeat for its founder.

Meanwhile, the Left Party, Wagenknecht's former party, may even be able to make it into the Bundestag without crossing the 5% hurdle. To do so, it would have to win at least three constituencies directly, as the Left Party did in 2021. It was thus able to receive almost 40 seats in the Bundestag, though its share of the vote was only 4.9%. Wagenknecht was one of those who benefited from this, and was able to enter parliament as one of these representatives.

At the end of the party's electoral convention, the BSW's leader was bullish as she appealed to the 600 or so delegates to go into the election campaign: "Now let's fight together! For we will make February 23 a huge success!"

This article was translated from German.

https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-will-be-test-for-sahra-wagenknecht-and-bsw/a-71292626

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