Die Linke enjoyed significant gains in the western part of the city and it remained the strongest party in the east, albeit with some losses. The party’s gains are encouraging, particularly for demonstrating that the Left can be successful with a consistently antiracist and pro-refugee message.
There is no doubt, however, that Sunday’s real winner was once again the AfD. The right-populist party secured a plurality of votes in many eastern neighborhoods Die Linke once took for granted, despite fielding multiple candidates openly associated with the far right. [...]
The vote in Berlin both confirms the city’s status as a cosmopolitan metropolis in which the forces of the center left enjoy broad hegemony, as well as reflects the wider national trend in which the parties of the center shed voters to both the left and right and the AfD establishes itself as the main destination for protest voters. The Alternative for Germany received its best results in the city’s poorer suburbs, followed by the middle-class neighborhoods in the west. [...]
That said, a drift among German workers towards right-populism can also be detected: according to exit polls, 27 percent of “workers” voted for the AfD, compared to 18 percent for the SPD, and 16 percent for Die Linke. While the urban, white-collar middle- and working-classes seem to respond to the crisis by moving left, large sections of the traditional center and working class are veering right.
This ongoing realignment remains an open-ended process, seen in both the rise of the AfD as well as the recovery of the Free Democrats, who enjoyed one of their first electoral successes since getting booted out of the Bundestag three years ago. It suggests that time may be running out for Germany’s period as a bastion of European stability, and will probably mean further electoral surprises in the future.
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