Ahead of the state election in Berlin, Germany’s capital, Left Party candidate Elif Eralp said she was taking inspiration from New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 election campaign for her own political program. Eralp is focusing on reducing housing and transportation costs in Berlin, solving the city’s waste collection problems and bringing different sections of society together.
Eralp, a 45-year-old member of the Berlin House of Representatives, said that if her party came first in the election and managed to form a coalition, she would become the first politician from a migrant background and the first member of a socialist party to head the Berlin state government. Eralp said the interests of the city’s residents should be prioritized without dividing Berliners according to their origins or social backgrounds.
Left Party leads the poll
The Left Party is in first place with 23 percent support in the latest poll published by ZDF. The party is two points ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, while the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany has 17 percent support.
If Eralp wins the election and forms a coalition led by the Left Party, it could signal a shift in the political balance of a cosmopolitan city such as Berlin. Eralp said one of the goals of her campaign was to send a strong message against the far right.
She seeks to adapt Mamdani’s campaign to Berlin
Eralp said Mamdani had placed social demands at the center of his campaign in New York and brought different communities together. She said her campaign in Berlin was similar in its aim of making large cities more livable and accessible.
The Left Party candidate has three main pledges. Eralp wants to limit rent increases, reduce bus and train fares and solve the problem of uncollected rubbish on the streets.
Eralp said high rents were one of Berlin’s biggest problems. She said affordable housing and transportation policies affected the daily lives of everyone living in the city, regardless of their social or ethnic background.
Social policy emphasized against the far right
Eralp’s campaign comes as debate continues over the far right’s growing strength following the election in Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt state. According to the Left Party candidate, a success in Berlin would show that politics focused on people’s real problems and based on a strong program can be effective against the far right.
Eralp said her team was conducting door-to-door outreach, including in areas where the Alternative for Germany was strong. She said some voters feared economic decline and losing their social standing, while others were turning to far-right narratives that blamed refugees and immigrants for the city’s problems.
Eralp argued that this trend was rooted in neoliberal policies, austerity measures and cuts to public spending that failed to adequately support poor people and those struggling in the city. She also claimed that Merz’s party had strengthened rather than weakened the Alternative for Germany through anti-immigration rhetoric.
She criticized interventions against pro-Palestinian protests
Eralp also criticized the Christian Democratic Union-led government of Berlin’s outgoing State Premier Kai Wegner for failing to solve the city’s social and economic problems. She also criticized interventions against pro-Palestinian protests, the cancellation of some events in recent years and what she described as disproportionate police force against peaceful demonstrators.
Eralp said the problems of Palestinians living in Berlin were being ignored and that the city administration should include Palestinians, Jews, Muslims and all other communities living in the city. Saying she wanted freedom of assembly and expression to be protected, Eralp said they would change practices in this area if they came to power.
Eralp said her party supported efforts to combat antisemitism and defended Palestinians’ right to exist as well as Israel’s right to exist. She argued that it was wrong to label accusations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had committed war crimes in Gaza as antisemitic, pointing to the war crimes and crimes against humanity cases before the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
