The new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) is finalizing its campaign platform at Sunday's party conference in Bonn. Founded to much media fanfare in January 2024, the party enjoyed a significant winning streak in its first year. 

Founded by the former leader of the socialist Left party and composed mostly of former members, too, the BSW went on to achieve double-digit results in three state elections. In the eastern states of Brandenburg and Thuringia, the party is already a coalition partner in the provincial governments.

Now, the BSW is seeking to enter the Bundestag in the general election scheduled for February 23, 2025, for which it will need to garner at least 5% of the vote. That's a tall order as it will be hard to find enough candidates among only 1,000 party members, a result of the strict scrutiny applied to people who want to join the alliance.

Currently, 10 lawmakers represent the BSW in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament. They all won their seats in 2021 as candidates for the Left party. In 2025, they are running for the BSW. According to the latest poll in Germany, the party is polling at around 5%.

Ukraine and refugees

Should Wagenknecht and her alliance make it into the Bundestag — parties in Germany must secure at least 5% of the vote to enter the federal parliament — it would probably be as an opposition party. The main obstacle to building a coalition at the national level is the BSW's position on support for Ukraine in defending itself against Russia's invasion . The BSW is calling for an end to German arms deliveries to Ukraine, an unacceptable position for the potential governing parties: the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens. As all other parties have done, the BSW has ruled out forming a coalition with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). 

The BSW and Left party have a lot of overlap on economic and social policy. However, they disagree fundamentally on asylum policy. The Left party does not seek further restrictions on immigration, while the BSW advocates more deterrence to keep displaced people from arriving to Germany in large numbers.

The BSW and the Left both object to heavy military support for Ukraine and Israel and are skeptical of NATO.

Sahra Wagenknecht's self-confidence

Both the Left party and the BSW warn that Germany could be dragged into a war. "We need a German government that does everything it can to reduce this threat," Wagenknecht says at campaign events.

The 55-year-old is a fixture on political TV talk shows in Germany and she is firmly convinced that she will make it into the Bundestag. "In the best-case scenario, we even have the opportunity to help shape a government," Wagenknecht has said.

An economist who was raised in communist-ruled East Germany, Wagenknecht describes her party as breaking the mold of traditional political classifications. She believes that people don't even know what labels such as "left" and "right" mean.

She has also argued against stonewalling the AfD. In 2023, she said it was wrong to deride all AfD supporters as "Nazis." "They are simply conservative people who used to be in the CDU," she said back then.

This article was originally written in German.

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