Left Party falls below electoral threshold in German elections

According to the preliminary official results of the general elections held in Germany on Sunday, the Left Party (Die Linke) remains below the 5 percent hurdle with 4.9 percent of the votes.

The two big losers in the Bundestag elections are Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Left Party. According to the provisional official results announced this morning, the CDU and its sister party CSU have dropped to 24.1 percent by losing 8.9 percent of its vote compared to the previous election.

The Left Party has lost 4.3 percent of its vote compared to the 2017 elections and remained at 4.9 percent. If the results remain as they are, the Left Party will remain under the 5 percent threshold. The party will thus be represented in the new parliament with only three directly elected deputies.

According to latest data, Gregor Gysi and Gesine Lötzsch from Berlin and Sören Pellmann from Leipzig received most of the votes in their constituencies and will be granted a seat in the Bundestag. With the three directly elected deputies, the party will be able to send 39 deputies to the parliament thanks to the complex electoral system.

CO-CHAIR MAY RESIGN

The Left Party supports the freedom struggle of the Kurdish people and wants the German state’s criminalization policy against the Kurds to end. The party also included several Kurdish candidates in its election lists. It is claimed that the election campaign of the CDU and its prime minister candidate Armin Laschet to defame the Left Party has caused the electoral defeat of the party.

Left Party Co-Chair Susanne Hennig-Wellsow attributed the election defeat to the electoral campaigns of the last weeks. She announced that she would resign from her position in the party if they officially fell under the threshold.

The former group leader of the Left Party, Sahra Wagenknecht, criticised her party administration on a TV Show. Wagenknecht argues that her party has moved away from its founding values ​​in recent years. “Instead of promoting the interests of workers, employers and pensioners, we have renounced them.”

SCHOLZ WILL FORM THE NEW GOVERNMENT

The Social Democrats Party (SPD) and the Green Party are the winners of the election. The SPD increased its votes by 5.2 percent and won the election with 25.7 percent. The Green Party increased its votes by 5.8 percent and received 14.8 percent. The Free Democrats Party (FDP) obtained 11.5 percent and the right-wingAlternative for Germany (AfD) 10.3 percent of the votes. The new government is expected to be formed by SPD's Olaf Scholz. A coalition to be formed by the SPD-Greens-FDP is very likely to emerge.