Berliners head to the polls on Sunday in an unusually tight election that could put the left-wing Die Linke at the center of the German capital’s next government and propel its lead candidate, Elif Eralp, into contention for the governing mayor’s office.
The latest surveys show anything but a certain victory. An Insa poll published this week puts Die Linke and the conservative CDU level at 20%, while an Infratest dimap survey gave Die Linke a narrow 21%-20% advantage and a ZDF poll put it at 23% against 21% for the CDU. The AfD, Greens and SPD trail behind, leaving coalition negotiations likely to determine who ultimately governs the city.
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Elif Eralp. After focusing on migration and climate, she is wooing voters with campaigns on housing and the cost of living
(Photo: REUTERS/Axel Schmidt)
Even so, Die Linke’s rise has been striking. The party won 12.2% of the second vote in Berlin’s 2023 repeat election, according to the official results, meaning current polling would represent a substantial gain.
At the center of that campaign is Eralp, 45, a lawyer and Berlin state lawmaker whose parents fled Turkey as socialist and trade-union activists. Her political work has focused heavily on migration, discrimination, civil rights and housing, and she has become the party’s candidate for governing mayor.
Berlin’s ‘Mamdani’
Eralp has increasingly been compared with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Die Linke itself has embraced the parallel. After Mamdani’s victory last year, Eralp said that if a leftist could win in New York, there was no reason the same could not happen in Berlin, calling his affordability-focused campaign an inspiration.
The resemblance is most visible in the issues Eralp has chosen to emphasize. Rather than building her campaign primarily around national or international ideological battles, she has focused on rents, housing and the cost of living, backed by intensive social-media outreach and door-to-door campaigning. German reporting on Die Linke’s strategy has explicitly described Mamdani’s New York campaign as a model for the party’s Berlin operation.
Housing is at the heart of the pitch. Eralp backs implementing Berlin’s 2021 referendum on bringing large corporate housing portfolios into public ownership, a proposal that would affect about 220,000 apartments. She also supports a rent cap for municipally owned housing and a state tenant-protection office.
The strategy is aimed at voters beyond Die Linke’s traditional base. Berlin’s housing shortage and soaring rents have pushed affordability to the forefront of the campaign, allowing Eralp to present the party’s program as a response to an everyday economic problem rather than simply an ideological project.
Recognition of ‘genocide’ and rejection of Oct. 7 celebrations
But the campaign has repeatedly been pulled back toward another issue: Israel and Gaza.
At its federal party conference in June, Die Linke formally adopted the position that Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide, endorsing the assessment cited by international organizations, rights groups and legal experts. The same party debate also stressed the security, self-determination and dignity of both Israelis and Palestinians, illustrating the effort by the leadership to combine its fierce criticism of Israel with opposition to antisemitism.
Eralp, the poster girl Die Linke could hardly have wished for
(Photo: REUTERS/Axel Schmidt)
Eralp has herself tried to draw that line. In May she published a five-point plan aimed at protecting and strengthening Jewish life in Berlin, warning that antisemitism had intensified since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack and saying Jews must be able to live openly and safely in the capital.
She also distanced herself from an incident at a Die Linke event in Neukölln where a rapper performed lyrics calling for the destruction of the IDF. Eralp said antisemitism must be confronted immediately and called for consequences over the episode.
Yet some activists associated with the party’s pro-Palestinian wing have gone considerably further. Hannah Bruns, a Die Linke member associated with its Palestine solidarity group, was documented declaring that Palestinian liberation would not be complete until Tel Aviv was “in Palestinian hands.” Die Welt has separately reported that party members sought her expulsion and described her as advocating an “Intifada until victory.”
The rhetoric places Eralp in a difficult position. Young and pro-Palestinian voters have been an important part of Die Linke’s recent growth, and reporting on the party’s campaign strategy has identified Gaza as one of the issues that helped it mobilize younger activists. At the same time, Eralp has publicly insisted that Jewish life must be protected and that antisemitism has no place in the party.
Party activists defend Oct. 7 as ‘resistance’
The internal dispute intensified again this week after Die Welt reported on an audio recording from a meeting of Die Linke Berlin’s Palestine solidarity working group.
According to the report, individual party members portrayed Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre as “resistance” and “self-defense.” One participant, discussing a proposal in support of armed resistance, said: “Was Oct. 7 a brutal act of terrorism? We have to say clearly: No, it was an act of resistance.” The proposal was ultimately rejected.
‘A home is a place where people live, not a tool for making profits’
(Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Those remarks directly contradict the Berlin party leadership’s stated position. In an October 2024 resolution, Die Linke Berlin declared: “Our solidarity ends where the massacre of Oct. 7 is celebrated as an act of resistance,” while also condemning Israeli war crimes and pledging to combat antisemitism in its own ranks.
The party subsequently adopted additional measures against antisemitism, including dialogue with Jewish and Israeli communities, outside expertise and procedures for responding when members violate party principles.
Those tensions have become part of the larger argument over what kind of Die Linke would enter government if the party performs strongly on Sunday: one centered on Eralp’s campaign against high rents and the cost of living, or one repeatedly forced to answer for the rhetoric of its most radical pro-Palestinian activists.
For Eralp, the final days of the campaign therefore involve two very different political battles. One is over who can make Berlin more affordable. The other is over whether she can maintain Die Linke’s pro-Palestinian positioning while enforcing the boundaries her party leadership says it has drawn around antisemitism, political violence and the Oct. 7 massacre. Berlin elects its new House of Representatives on September 20.