Wagenknecht Party: The miracle cure against the AfD?

The “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht” was presented as an association at the end of October. Today it is becoming a party. Surveys show it has great potential. Is Wagenknecht the competition that will scare the AfD?

So far there is no program, no regional associations, just five A4 pages with what is planned politically. And there are surveys that certify that the “Wagenknecht Party” has a political potential of almost 30 percent.

“Do you think a new party led by Sahra Wagenknecht is good or not so good for Germany?” This question in ARD GermanyTrend from November, 36 percent of all respondents answered positively for Wagenknecht. This is a very good result for a party that did not yet exist at the time of the survey.

Almost more important: AfD supporters are by far the most enthusiastic about the new party. Of them, 61 percent say that they think the former left-wing politician’s founding of the party is good or even very good. And this means that the sympathies of these voters are much more pronounced with Wagenknecht than those of the left-wing electorate.

Classic AfD voter groups

“A Wagenknecht party is definitely the greatest danger for the AfD,” says political scientist Sarah Wagner from Queens University in Belfast. She did this last summer with colleagues created a study that deals intensively with the voter groupsfor whom a new party would be interesting.

The result shows: Wagenknecht received the most support from people who are culturally conservative, skeptical about migration and generally dissatisfied with the existing democracy in Germany. People who are in favor of higher top tax rates and who want more government help for people with low-paying jobs, but who don’t understand why so much money has to be invested in environmental protection or why trans people have more rights. These are exactly the classic AfD voter groups.

The scientist also specifically asked about the sympathies among previous AfD voters for Wagenknecht. On a scale of -5 to +5, current AfD voters gave Wagenknecht a grade of +2. AfD party leader Alice Weidel did only slightly better (+3).

The result is also interesting because at that time Wagenknecht was still playing an important role in another party – namely the Left. “These are numbers that are otherwise unheard of, that voters from one party show so much sympathy for the leading politician of another party,” emphasizes Wagner.

Alternative to the right alternative

Wagenknecht herself repeatedly says that she – and her new party – wants to be an alternative to the right-wing alternative. The alliance writes on its homepage under the heading “Freedom”: “We reject right-wing extremist, racist and violent ideologies of any kind.”

The new party will have a dual female leadership. Sahra Wagenknecht and Amira Mohamed Ali will share the chair. Mohamed Ali was once Wagenknecht’s successor as parliamentary group leader of the Left in the Bundestag, but resigned because of the sometimes hateful power struggles in the parliamentary group and the party and finally resigned from the Left together with Wagenknecht last year. Two women whose fathers come from Iran and Egypt, two politicians who, because of this origin alone, oppose right-wing extremist, racist tendencies.

Wagenknecht and Mohamed Ali have been emphasizing for a long time that they want to take votes from the AfD. Both believe that many people only vote for the AfD because they are angry and disappointed. Already in the press conference when the club was founded, Wagenknecht said: “We are launching a party so that all the people who are angry, out of desperation, but not because they are right-wing, can now think about voting for the AfD or something else have already done so that these people have a reputable address.”

“Size credibility built at”

The founding paper of the “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht” association states that immigration can be an enrichment. The BSW wants to limit immigration to a level “that does not overwhelm our country and its infrastructure”. These few statements about migration policy will hardly be attractive to convinced AfD voters. Why choose the light version when you can have the more rigorous original?

The political scientist Wagner also sees Wagenknecht’s skepticism about migration as attractive to many people. “In the last ten or fifteen years, Sahra Wagenknecht has always been perceived in the context of too many refugees and migration skepticism, on talk shows and all of her other media appearances,” says Wagner. “And you could see very clearly that she has not only made herself completely independent of the position of the left, but has also built up a lot of credibility when it comes to this topic. People trust her that she knows what she is talking about.”

Party for many disappointed people?

The GermanyTrend confirms this thesis. When asked why electing a new party under Wagenknecht’s leadership was fundamentally an option for them, 40 percent answered “out of disappointment with other parties”, 28 percent cited “the person of Sahra Wagenknecht” as the reason and 25 percent cited “migration policy.” The policy on refugees, asylum and immigration is important, but not everything is decisive.

That is also the assessment of the political scientist Wagner: “There are also protest voters, people who are not on the same line as Björn Höcke, for example. And these people can now find a political home because Sahra Wagenknecht covers similar topics, but doesn’t – at least not yet – have these extreme wings.”

In the 2017 federal election, 400,000 voters left the Left and switched to the AfD. The likelihood that a left that has now moved further to the left will win these people back is very low. If Wagenknecht manages to run with convincing candidates in the state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, it is much more likely that this new party will take away votes from the AfD.