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Die Linke is operating in a situation marked by extreme asynchronicity and polarization: substantial segments of the political establishment and the media have shifted to the right following the refugee crisis. At the same time, we witnessed something like a latent social mass movement: literally millions of people (albeit primarily from the middle class) got involved in refugee work. Die Linke was faced with the challenge of seeking to pursue a left-wing refugee policy on the one hand, while, on the other, a part of its core clientele — segments of the unemployed and working classes ­— adopted a, to put it mildly, more ambivalent approach to the refugee movement.

Racism of course played a major role here, but so did the fact that the state’s austerity policies which characterized many Germans’ experiences with welfare benefits, infrastructure, etc. in recent years were suddenly suspended in this situation. Particularly for low-wage workers, refugees were suddenly not only threatening to take away their piece of the distributional pie, but were even potential competitors on the job market.

These centrifugal forces among the electorate posed a huge challenge for Die Linke, which ultimately responded with a kind of schizophrenic division of labor: party co-chair Katja Kipping tried to relate to the refugee movement politically, while leading candidate Sahra Wagenknecht made overtures to those whose response to the refugee movement was primarily one of fear. That the party managed to remain so stable in this situation is a modest victory in itself.

This situation is embedded within a fundamental transformation of the political system. The potential partners for a broader progressive project, the SPD and the Greens, have shown no interest in left-wing policies, instead orienting themselves towards the political center and presenting themselves not as representatives of the opposition, but as potential coalition partners for Angela Merkel, who will almost certainly win the election. This has granted Die Linke a bit more room to maneuver in a strong opposition role, as the question of a left-wing government simply isn’t on the agenda. The reform-oriented wing of the party has done little in the way of initiating political projects in recent years, instead making repeated demands to join government like a broken record player.

Things are a bit different on the regional level, but at the federal level there exists in my view — as in many Western capitalisms — a populist constellation. There is an overall crisis of representation, expressed most specifically in widespread dissatisfaction with the two major parties, which have strategically positioned themselves as parties of the radical center over the last fifteen years.

This has facilitated stronger political differentiation on the fringes and, ultimately, political polarization, first leading to the formation of Die Linke, and now to the establishment of the AfD, which absorbed the more right-wing and nationalist elements of the CDU. Die Linke manages to hold firm as parts of society drift to the right, which itself is more than nothing. Ultimately, however, it won’t be enough, as the party’s potential is actually much higher than the 8-10 percent it will probably receive in the elections.

At the moment, the AfD is the relevant populist force opposing the mainstream parties. Die Linke is — despite its democratic socialist program — not an anti-establishment force, but rather tends to present itself as a prospective coalition partner. Sahra Wagenknecht tried, and not entirely without success, to contest the AfD’s role by employing populist rhetoric. Too often, however, her strategy amounted to an adaptation to the AfD’s talking points, which deeply limited this attempt. This is also why the AfD has become the new workers’ party, threatening to unseat Die Linke as the country’s biggest protest party, particularly in the east. That said, Die Linke tends to perform better among younger and highly qualified voters.