With Trump’s re-election and a further intensification of the multiple crises of the capitalist system, the so-called ‘traffic light coalition’ (named after the colors of the parties — SPD (red), FDP (yellow) and the Green Party of the German government also collapsed on November 6. Even at that point, nothing good was to be expected in the new elections. And that is exactly what happened last Sunday: the AfD is the second strongest party and would-be Trump Friedrich Merz has become the new chancellor. However, the shift to the right has not gone unanswered.

At 82.5%, voter turnout was the highest since German reunification in 1990. Unsurprisingly, the traffic light coalition was voted out: with a result of 16.41% (-9.3% compared to 2021), the SPD beat all previous lows; the Greens also lost with 11.61%, and the FDP was left out of the Bundestag (German national parliament) with 4.33% and its leader, Christian Lindner, left politics entirely. As expected, the right-wing gained strength: the CDU/CSU became the strongest party with a 28.52% share of the vote, followed by the AfD with 20.8%.

However, a surprising turn of events and the greatest success in the election campaign for working people and young people are the 8.77% of voters who voted for the Left Party. It is a party that, despite all its good programmatic points, seemed to be on the verge of collapse until January, a political loser with an aging membership, hopelessly unsuccessful, especially among young people, abandoned by its former base of voters in the East. It had done pretty much everything wrong in recent years that it could have done wrong, and only achieved 2.7% in the 2024 European elections and mostly remained in the background in movements. This party has now suddenly become a glimmer of hope for all those who do not want to accept the shift to the right without a fight and want to oppose the general madness of capitalism.

An election campaign full of racism

The election campaign was more disgusting than ever before: all bourgeois parties tried to flatten the world’s crises — whether economic, political, ecological or social — with a huge steamroller of racism. “Foreigners out!” became the unanimous election campaign slogan from the SPD to the AfD and the general response to individual acts of violence in society. This had already been prepared for some time by the tightening of asylum laws by the traffic light coalition, repression against pro-Palestinian activists and the anti-social policies of all bourgeois parties with general agitation against the most vulnerable members of society, such as recipients of social benefits.

This has caught on with many people: in a survey about the biggest problems for living together in Germany, 77% named the gulf between the rich and the poor, but 63% also named “cultural differences between people with different origins”. 68% say that Germany should take in fewer refugees.

Even when the racist agitation culminated in Merz’s unprecedented move in the Bundestag on January 29 to push through resolutions on border closures supported by votes from the AfD breaking the so-called post-war ‘firewall’ of mainstream parties refusing to rely or govern with the hard-right, 43% of the population supported this approach, and a further 23% at least supported the content of the CDU motions.

This did not benefit any of the established parties, and it actually cost the CDU votes. Merz’s embarrassing move to push through even more far-reaching resolutions against refugees two days later failed and damaged his image. As always with these “we’ll beat the Nazis by pursuing right-wing politics ourselves” maneuvers, the extreme right-wing parties benefited and the AfD’s share of the vote stabilized. Voters prefer the original to a bad imitation — especially if they also express hatred for the establishment.

An example of this is the AfD’s election victory in Gelsenkirchen in the impoverished Ruhr region, where the SPD previously dominated, or in the Eastern German states (except Berlin), where the AfD won all direct mandates except Leipzig and Weimar — where the Left Party won.

Only among older people can the SPD and CDU still score points, albeit to varying degrees. In general, the older people are, the more they lean towards the CDU. Among voters aged 18–24, its share of the vote is 13%, and 44% among those over 70. 42.1% of voters are older than 60; under-30s make up only 13.3% of eligible voters.

With 14% and 15% respectively, the FDP and the Greens are strongest in the 24–35 age group. The absurd hype surrounding the FDP in the last federal elections among young people is long gone, and there are no longer any illusions about the party’s rise. In the East, the party had already been sent to the afterlife getting below 1% in the state elections last fall.

The winner of the last state elections, the Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), has clearly come to the end of its success, with only 4.97%, the party will not be in the Bundestag. The need for a political celebrity-based mixture of a bit of retro social democracy, AfD racism and pseudo-antimilitarism is low. In the competition with the AfD, the BSW fell by the wayside, with 60,000 voters defecting. Through its ‘pragmatic’ government participation, the party has exhausted its image as a supposed anti-establishment force. The party’s more left-wing former supporters are put off by its racism, and for its right-wing it does not go far enough.

The Left Party: a miraculous turnaround

The number one party among young voters and even younger people not yet of voting age is clearly Die Linke (the Left Party). Among first-time voters, it reached 27% (+19 percentage points since 2021), while 18–24 year-olds voted for it at a rate of 25%. The establishment parties, including the Greens, remained between 5% and 13% each. However, 20% and 21% respectively in these groups voted for the AfD, and the political polarization is particularly evident here. This is even sharper in the East, where 34% of young voters voted for the Left Party and 32% for the AfD. Only a combined 23% of young people in Eastern Germany voted for any party that existed in the West before 1990.

As one factor, the Left Party was voted for as a counterweight to the racist and generally inhumane propaganda of the establishment parties — as the only party that did not shout “foreigners out”.

Alongside this, Merz’s demolition of the firewall has driven over two million people onto the streets across Germany in recent weeks and made them ready to fight. Many of these people have now drawn their conclusions from the mass protests at the beginning of 2024, which were hugely impressive with 2 million participants, but in the end seemingly faded away without consequences. These activists now want to organize themselves politically on the left and oppose the Trumps, Merzes and Höckes of this world, fight for their rights and change something. Quite a few of them previously voted for the Greens, but are disappointed by the reality of their anti-climate, anti-social and warmongering policies in power.

Over 35,000 mostly young people have joined the Left Party in recent months, bringing its membership to over 100,000 and making it stronger than ever before. Over 50% of these have joined since the departure of Wagenknecht and her supporters.

Not least because of these new members, tens of thousands of whom were active every day, the Left Party ran a good election campaign this time. It won six direct mandates (its candidates coming first in a constituency), including four in Berlin, where it also became the strongest party in the overall vote with 20%. In Berlin-Neukölln, Ferat Kocak won the first direct mandate for a party to the left of the SPD in West Germany since the Communist Party in the early 1930s. The Left Party won 30% of the individual candidate (first) votes and 25.3% of the regional list (second) votes after a tireless campaign on the streets and at hundreds of thousands of doorsteps in the district, in which thousands actively participated.

Other factors were very successful social media work on TikTok and Instagram and convincing appearances by party leaders Heidi Reichinnek and Jan van Aken. As well, there was a focus on issues of wealth distribution and social issues such as rents. Jan van Aken began his speech at a large demonstration against the right in Cologne on February 1 with the words “I’m against billionaires” and explained the connection between capital and fascism.

City and country, young and old

Polarization is growing not only between young and old, not only between urban and rural areas, but also between genders. According to a survey by Infratest/dimap, “younger women in the city” voted 35% for the Left, 10% for AfD and 9% for CDU, while “older men in the countryside” voted 4% for the Left, 19% for AfD and 41% for CDU.

Unlike in the past, the Left Party is now stronger in the West than in the East, with 3,030,000 votes. Its new voters, just like its new members, come primarily from universities and from urban, well-educated sections of the working class, e.g. from the education sector, the healthcare sector and the media and IT industry. Many manual and production workers, on the other hand, voted for the AfD, the most anti-working-class party of all (workers: 38%, +17 percentage points since 2021; unemployed: 34%, +17% percentage points since 2021). The AfD also mobilized by far the most previous non-voters (+1,810,000 votes), while the Left Party mobilized only 320,000 previous non-voters.

Can the Left Party use its new momentum to seize on the massive frustration and anger of the working class towards the establishment and the system from the left and channel it towards resistance? Can it convince people that the problem is not in a rubber dinghy, but in a private jet?

A weapon for future battles

Friedrich Merz said immediately after the elections that he was aiming for a new grand coalition with the SPD. The CDU does not yet seem to be able to afford a coalition with the AfD. Either way, we are facing fierce attacks. Even before the elections, plans for a 700 billion euro militarization programme leaked out, with many EU states planning to increase military spending to 5% of GDP and more.

For the majority of the population, this means not only the constant threat of military escalation and the possible reintroduction of compulsory military service, but also brutal social cuts, as is already the case in many municipalities. There is a threat of cuts and coercive measures for recipients of citizens’ income allowance and attacks on continued payment of wages, and possibly also on democratic rights such as the right to strike.

Nothing is clear yet, but one thing is certain: We must prepare the resistance. The trade unions have a duty here. The Left Party has once again become a force with a lot of fighting potential. It should use its parliamentary strength above all to build up the workers’ movement and social movements. It must not continue to fall into the old, proven fatal traps of cronyism with the SPD and Greens or even government participation at federal, state or local level.

The Left Party must consistently oppose war and arms deliveries and fight against militarization and conscription, against racism and all attacks on living and social standards. This is not just about taxing millionaires, but about attacking and abolishing the capitalist relations of production that produce a small handful of billionaires and billions of poor people. The left has no future if it participates in capitalist crisis management, but only if it consistently stands up for the expropriation and socialization of the means of production and for a socialist economic system.