BSW wants to get into parliament: Wagenknecht Party: Can it keep the AfD small in the East?

Now everything should happen very quickly. In October, the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance was nothing more than an announcement. After its founding at the beginning of January, the new party’s first federal party conference will follow next Saturday (January 27th). And shortly afterwards the first regional associations should be ready to go. Time is of the essence, especially in East Germany. The BSW wants to have a decisive say in the important elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg this year.

There are also some people who are keeping their fingers crossed for the former left-wing politician who can’t really do much with her mix of left-wing social policy, migration restrictions and broadsides against the left-liberal zeitgeist. The widespread hope: The BSW should keep the right-wing AfD small in the eastern German states by gathering protest voters. It is difficult to estimate whether this will work.

“All surveys show that we have great potential,” says Wagenknecht in an interview with the German Press Agency. “It is currently impossible to say with certainty how many of them will actually vote for us in the end.” The polls are soaring for now. Nationwide, values ​​of around 12 percent have already been measured for the BSW. Recently it was sometimes 3 percent, sometimes 7 percent, depending on the question method.

Left and conservative voters

However, Potsdam political researcher Jan Philipp Thomeczek confirms the potential. “If the party is going to enter parliament somewhere as quickly as possible, it will be in East Germany in the three states where elections will be held this year,” says Thomeczek in an interview with the dpa. The scientist created the so-called BSW-O-Mat. This allows you to check online whether you agree with the BSW program.

The party can therefore score points with left-wing and conservative voters: “The BSW is interesting for people who currently say that I like the AfD’s criticism of migration, but perhaps I don’t agree with what they are doing on the economic and social policy level AfD says and I would rather have a more left-wing program,” says the Potsdam researcher.

High expectations in East Germany

This mix works in East Germany, even though Wagenknecht is the only one of East German origin in the party leadership. A donation of one million euros recently came from an East German couple, as the BSW confirmed. Wagenknecht himself refers to the special social problems in the East. “There are even more people who have to work for the minimum wage, many older people with low pensions,” says the native Thuringian.

Then the 54-year-old, who now lives with her husband Oskar Lafontaine in Saarland, talks about the feeling of people in the countryside of being forgotten, about the fear of social decline and the loss of industries. “They’ve experienced this before. And East Germans are particularly sensitive when they experience excessive politics that want to teach and educate them.”

Many people did not vote for the AfD because of its ideology, but rather out of anger and disappointment with Berlin’s politics, says Wagenknecht. “Of course I hope that we can convince many of these people, including previous non-voters,” she says. She has ruled out a coalition with the AfD. But the BSW wants to have a say. “Now it will be important that we make convincing offers locally,” says Wagenknecht.

Prominent defector in Thuringia

Important figures in the new party are former Left members, including in Thuringia, where the BSW is competing with the left-wing Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow. There, Wagenknecht won the mayor of Eisenach, Katja Wolf, who will probably run for the state parliament. The 47-year-old said her main motivation for her move was that she wanted to help prevent the AfD’s success with right winger Björn Höcke in Thuringia.

The BSW regional association is to be founded by March and the list of candidates is to be drawn up in April. In addition to Wolf, the first 20 Thuringian BSW members also include the Eisenach media entrepreneur Steffen Schütz, Matthias Herzog from the Erfurt professional basketball club and the former left-wing member of the Bundestag Sigrid Hupach.

There is political potential here too. In an Insa survey commissioned by Funke media, the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance came to 17 percent. The CDU achieved 20 percent, the ruling left only 15 percent. Number one is the AfD with 31 percent, regardless of the regional association’s classification as “secure right-wing extremist”.

“There is a spirit of optimism”

The AfD is also ahead in Saxony – most recently in a Forsa survey at 34 percent, ahead of the CDU with 30 percent, the SPD with 7 percent and the Greens with 8 percent. Approval for the BSW has not yet been measured.

But the party is also feeling a tailwind in the Free State, as says Sabine Zimmermann, a former left-wing member of the Bundestag and now responsible for setting up the BSW in Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. “There is a spirit of optimism,” says Zimmermann. “Many people have hope in us that we can change something. But we can only change something if we become strong.”

The BSW is not a “Left 2.0”, but there are many former leftists with experience in local parliaments. They are “left-wing conservative” and do not view the left as political opponents, says Zimmermann. “I see my personal hope and also our historical responsibility in breaking the AfD’s soaring heights.”

Zimmermann is satisfied with the structure of the party in Saxony. “But we’re really under time pressure.” In order to start the local elections in June, the state association must be in place by mid-March.

14 members in Brandenburg

The same time pressure exists in Brandenburg, where there are also local elections on June 9th and the state elections on September 22nd. It was perhaps the quietest around the BSW so far. Now the BSW state representative Stefan Roth spoke up. “After the federal party conference, we will start in Brandenburg with a first team of initially 14 party members, including experienced local politicians, initiators of protests as well as previously non-party members from the middle of society – teachers, police officers, entrepreneurs,” Roth explained to the dpa.

14 members, that’s not a lot when it comes to hundreds of mandates in cities, towns and the state parliament. Roth expects the party to grow steadily. “Many people no longer know what they should vote for. We therefore want to close the gaping political gap in the party system in Brandenburg and offer voters an alternative to traffic lights, the CDU and AfD.”