Next Sunday, Germans will go to the polls to elect a new federal government.
According to the latest polls, Germany’s most leftward coalition option, dubbed “Red-Red-Green,” is now very much viable. It would consist of the resurgent, center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the rising center-left Greens, and the Left Party (the renamed Socialist Unity Party of East Germany).
Red-Red-Green is a real possibility not because the Left Party somehow suddenly saw an enormous increase in support. It didn’t. At the federal level, its poll numbers have almost always stayed below 10%. What has changed is that the SPD’s opposition to a coalition with the former communists has faded away.
Under Merkel, the center-right Christian Democratic Union of Germany adopted more and more positions of the SPD. These included support for minimum wage laws, ending nuclear energy, and expanding the welfare state. This, in turn, pushed the SPD further to the left. New SPD leaders Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken now openly talk of pursuing “democratic socialism.” They want to use eminent domain and nationalizations to create “a more just society.” No wonder they’re now open to a coalition with the Left Party — both party’s visions for the economy are aligning.
Yet the SPD’s new leaders also know they have to avoid alienating the center ground. Hence why they selected their former rival Olaf Scholz, finance minister in the current CDU-SPD coalition government, as the SPD candidate for chancellor. It’s paying off. Scholz is lifting his party’s poll numbers to new heights, surpassing the CDU.
Notwithstanding his centrist appeal, Scholz hasn’t ruled out a coalition with the Left Party. And critics say that’s for a reason: With his boring, statesman-like appearance, he serves as a Trojan horse for the radicals in his party. Esken and Walter-Borjans remain in charge. Unlike in the U.S., party chairs in Europe are the undisputed decision-makers on all major personnel and policy issues.
Berlin, a city-state in Germany’s federal system that has been ruled by a Red-Red-Green coalition for years, gives a glimpse of what that model could mean for Germany as a whole: Ridiculed as a “failed state,” Berlin is the laughing stock of national politics in Germany. Berlin’s government has made headlines for designating zones for drug dealers in parks, overseeing a rise in criminal clans, and passing into law an unconstitutional rent cap. Berlin’s coalition serves as a blueprint for the left-wing transformation Germany could see if voters give those three parties a majority in the federal election.
With its conservative base demotivated, the CDU now faces its worst result in its history, somewhere around 20%, according to recent polling. So if leftists indeed succeed with establishing a Red-Red-Green coalition, part of Merkel’s legacy will be handing over the keys of government to the most left-wing coalition post-War Germany has ever seen.
Sebastian Thormann is a student at the University of Passau in Germany and a columnist at the Lone Conservative in the U.S. He has also written for the National Interest, CapX, and Townhall.com.
