Germany's leftwing Die Linke has won Berlin's state election, taking 25.7% of the vote and 38 of the 130 seats in the city's parliament, according to the preliminary result established by the Berlin returning officer at 2.14am on Monday.
The outcome puts the party's lead candidate, Elif Eralp, in position to become the first Governing Mayor of Berlin drawn from Die Linke. The Berliner Zeitung noted before the vote that the party has never held the post. Eralp, a lawyer who has sat in the Abgeordnetenhaus since November 2021 and has been deputy group leader since 2024, fought the campaign on housing costs and on an explicit comparison with Zohran Mamdani's mayoral win in New York.
Die Linke took 467,965 votes on the preliminary count, more than doubling the 12.2% and 22 seats it won in 2023. The Christian Democrats fell to 18.8%, or 342,406 votes and 28 seats, down from 28.2% and 52 seats. The Alternative für Deutschland rose to 16.3%, or 296,531 votes and 24 seats, up from 9.1% and 17 seats. The figures are preliminary and the final official result has yet to be published. Sixty-six seats are needed for a majority, so coalition talks will determine who governs.
Addressing supporters at Festsaal Kreuzberg about ten minutes after the first projection on Sunday evening, Eralp said, as reported by taz:
„Ab heute verändern wir gemeinsam unser Berlin und machen es zu einem besseren Ort."
The remark translates as: from today we will change our Berlin together and make it a better place.
The result exceeded pre-election polling. The aggregator PolitPro's weighted average on polling day put Die Linke on 20.7%, narrowly ahead of the CDU on 20% and the AfD on 17.9%.
The campaign's borrowing from Mamdani was reported by several outlets before polling day, although accounts of the contact differ. The Washington Post reported on 19 September that one of the leading candidates in the race had met an adviser to the New York mayor. The Irish Times reported on Sunday that Mamdani's campaign strategist had visited Berlin in the spring to advise Eralp and her party, while the Times of Israel reported on 18 September that Die Linke sent a delegation to New York in November 2025 to study the Mamdani campaign. The Swiss outlet Blick identified the adviser as Morris Katz, an American strategist who worked on Mamdani's campaign. The terms of any engagement have not been made public.
Eralp has embraced the comparison. The Tagesspiegel reported that after Mamdani's win in November 2025 she said: „Wenn ein Linker in New York gewinnen kann, dann genauso gut in Berlin", meaning that if a leftist can win in New York, one can equally win in Berlin. Speaking to journalists on Friday, she described the success of a democratic socialist in what she called the heartland of capitalism as a major achievement, in remarks rendered differently by the Irish Times and by The Local Germany. Die Linke was nominated her as lead candidate roughly three weeks before Mamdani's victory, according to taz.
The party campaigned under the slogan „Berlin bezahlbar machen", or make Berlin affordable. Eralp backs implementing Berlin's 2021 referendum on transferring large corporate housing portfolios into public ownership, covering about 220,000 flats, alongside a rent cap for municipally owned housing and a state tenant-protection office.
The emulation was not wholesale. The daily nd-aktuell reported before the vote that Berlin's Die Linke had deliberately adopted a different communications strategy from Mamdani's on Israel and Palestine.
Berlin voted on the same day as Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Chancellor Friedrich Merz spent the evening at CDU headquarters in Berlin rather than travelling to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, NPR reported.
Join the Discussion
Have something to say? Join the conversation!
Sign in to share your thoughts and engage with other readers.
Sign In Create AccountNo comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this article!