In the Berlin election, Die Linke has its own Mamdani to defeat the CDU

Berlin. The sovereigntist AfD party has managed to cast a shadow over the German capital: on 6 September, the eyes of Europe were fixed on Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD indeed won a landslide victory amongst the 1.69 million eligible voters. Next Sunday, albeit with more modest figures, the anti-establishment party is also expected to come top in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an eastern federal state as large as Lombardy but with just 1.6 million inhabitants. On 20 September, however, Berliners will also go to the polls in an election that is sure to hold some surprises.

Firstly: there are almost 2.5 million eligible voters, far more than in either of the two individual Länder. Secondly: the resident population is close to 4 million, but 865,000 Berliners aged over 16 cannot vote because they do not hold German citizenship: that is one in five residents. 
The third surprise is entirely political: in a country where the AfD comes top in elections and opinion polls – according to the latest YouGov survey, it stands at 29 per cent nationally compared with 18 per cent for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU – in Berlin the sovereigntist party is expected to come third with 18 per cent.

Tied at 20 per cent in the polls, the socialists of Die Linke and the Christian Democrats led by outgoing mayor Kai Wegner are vying for the mayor’s seat. The mayor – in Berlin, where surprises never cease – was not renominated after playing tennis last January while the southwestern districts of the capital were plunged into darkness and freezing cold due to a massive power outage reportedly caused by Russian interference. Having denied that he’d taken an hour to relax – “I worked the whole time that day” – Wegner had to step aside in favour of his Finance Councillor, Stefan Evers.

Evers is not a true-blue Berliner but was born 46 years ago in the Ruhr region. He has lived in the capital since he was 19 and is married to a man; today, he is campaigning against extremism: both on the far right (i.e. the AfD) and on the far left (Die Linke), led by the 45-year-old candidate Elif Eralp. Evers aims to replicate the model of the outgoing Grand Coalition, perhaps expanded to include the Greens, who, however, are far more inclined to lean to the left. Her programme focuses on housing (more homes, built faster), less bureaucracy (an appointment at the registry office can take weeks) and greater security (Berlin is plagued by various criminal gangs), without forgetting the goal of net-zero emissions by 2040.

Eralp isn’t from Berlin either. She was born in Munich 45 years ago and grew up in Hamburg, the daughter of two Turkish trade unionists who had fled their home country. A law graduate specialising in support for immigrants and refugees, Eralp has been described as Berlin’s Zohran Mamdani. Her programme focuses on social issues, starting with the right to housing in a capital where the cost of living has risen sharply since the end of the pandemic. During the election campaign, she handed out vegetarian meals for three euros: her idea is to set up ‘Kiezkantinen’ – neighbourhood canteens – where residents can eat without being fleeced. Speaking to the press, the mayoral candidate admitted that the left’s biggest mistake was privatising the city’s housing stock 25 years ago: now is the time to bring flats back under public control to cap rents. This stance is in line with that of Die Linke, which in the past supported a consultative referendum on the expropriation of properties owned by the capital’s major property companies. Held in 2021, the referendum resulted in 56 per cent voting ‘yes’, but the project was subsequently shelved by successive city councils.

Highly active on social media, Eralp has faced criticism for alleged anti-Semitism. The candidate has been heavily criticised by Evers, as well as by the Social Democrats and the Greens, for the concert organised by Die Linke on 18 August in Neukölln – the Berlin district with the largest Middle Eastern population – when the rapper Dahabflex sang “death to the IDF” (the Israeli Defence Forces)Eralp expressed deep regret, before reiterating once again last Monday that the Left Party “is committed to protecting Jewish life just as it is Palestinian and Islamic life”. And two days ago, the socialist-communist party distanced itself from stickers that had appeared around the city bearing the slogan “Yallah Intifada! With Elif Eralp: let’s vote the Intifada into the regional parliament!”.