The party is hoping for a breath of fresh air before the upcoming state elections in East Germany.
ADVERTISINGThe leaders of the German Left Party, Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan, have announced their resignation after a series of electoral defeats and growing criticism of the party.
On the party’s website, the two announced that they would no longer run for office at the party conference in Halle in October. They have been leading the Left Party together since 2022.
Schirdewan called on party members to support her successor in the hope that he could bring a breath of fresh air to the party in view of the state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg in September.
The disappointing election results in succession may have contributed to Wissler and Schirdewan’s resignation as party leaders. In the European elections in June, the Left Party in Germany received only 2.7 percent of the vote.
Former Left Party politician Sahra Wagenknecht, on the other hand, founded her own party, the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance), which received 6.2 percent of the vote.
Analyses showed that the BSW had poached a significant proportion of voters from the Left Party, prompting its members to demand consequences for their dismal performance.
The Left Party is hoping that the new leadership will give the impression that the party is reinventing itself ahead of the state elections in eastern Germany. And it seems that they have a lot of work ahead of them.
In 2019, the Left Party received 31 percent of the votes in Thuringia. However, current polls assume that this share of the vote will only be half as high this time.
