A Nameless Alliance

Just three months after Left Party star Sahra Wagenknecht announced she was leaving the party after 16 years of service, she formed her own political group.

The eponymous Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), an economically socialist yet culturally conservative party, was born in January 2024. The BSW’s far-left and far-right platform has always felt inherently contradictory, operating under the assumption that extremism is a circle rather than a spectrum. As the party worked through its political paradoxes, the cult of personality around Wagenknecht did much of the heavy lifting to gain notoriety in the early days. This makes it all the more significant that she has stepped down as the BSW’s leader less than two years after founding it. She leaves behind a legacy of infighting, organizational missteps and a crushing national electoral defeat.

Born in the eastern city of Jena in 1969, Wagenknecht was a member of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party and then its post-reunification successor, the Party of Democratic Socialism. As a member of the latter, she was elected to the European Parliament in 2004. She then joined the Left Party after its founding in 2007 and pivoted back to German domestic politics. Wagenknecht was considered a radical but popular voice among The Left, and in 2015 she was elected co-chair of the party’s Bundestag faction. But after several years of increasing distance from and outspoken criticism of her comrades, she exited The Left and took nine members of the faction with her.

The potential for Germany’s newest party was promising at its founding. The BSW garnered in its first year as much as 9% support in national polls. It leaped over its first electoral hurdle in the May 2024 European Parliament elections when it captured 6.2% of the vote. The following month, polling showed Wagenknecht to be Germany’s third-most popular politician, behind Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Christian Social Union head Markus Söder. The BSW did well again that fall, when elections took place in the eastern German states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, home of her compatriots and most ardent base. The BSW is now part of the governing coalition in the latter two. Those victories were considered significant, but still mere stepping stones to the real prize: the 2025 Bundestag election.

Two days before February’s election, the BSW polled right at the 5% threshold needed to enter the parliament. Public enthusiasm had cooled after the BSW’s historic first year, as interparty tensions and mismanagement dominated the headlines against the backdrop of an increasingly murky party platform. Many observers nevertheless saw an opportunity for the BSW to lure a significant portion of the far-right Alternative for Germany’s base, but the upstart actually drew more votes away from establishment parties of the political middle. The largest number of political émigrés, around 440,000, came from the center-left Social Democrats. Despite this, the BSW got just 4.98% of the total vote, roughly 9,500 votes short of their goal.

Speculation about the reasons for the BSW’s failure is rife. One theory concerns personnel. The BSW was founded around the personality that is Sahra Wagenknecht, and this caused tension with the party’s other popular politicians, such as Thuringian BSW-chair Katja Wolf. Instead of capitalizing on the party’s overall acclaim, Wagenknecht appeared to limit the influence of those in her ranks. She was also keen to restrict the number of new party members, wanting to vet each one to ensure ideological purity. Despite receiving over 8,000 member applications and 17,000 individuals who signed on as official supporters in the two months after its founding, the BSW aimed to have only 1,000 members by the end of 2024. The goal may have been quality over quantity, but the result was the alienation of thousands of potential voters ahead of a tight election. It was also no secret that Wagenknecht eschewed the operational minutiae of managing her party, which opened a gap between her personal platform and the BSW’s national image. In another unconventional move, she chose not to run as a candidate herself, eliminating the possibility of winning an individual mandate. The party’s loss, therefore, left her fully outside government.

Wagenknecht has always been more about ideas than administration. She plans, therefore, to remain involved with the BSW by leading a party-adjacent values-based commission (which has yet to be created). Co-founder Amira Mohammed Ali will continue to lead the party, with Fabio De Masi leaving the European Parliament to help take up the mantle. Although it is losing its “SW”, the group will retain the same moniker. Now, however, “BSW” will stand for “Bündnis Soziale Gerechtigkeit und Wirtschaftliche Vernunft”, the Alliance for Social Justice and Economic Prudence.

As attitudes towards Wagenknecht become more polarized due to her pro-Russia (and arguably pro-Putin) views, it is unclear if her removal as the face of the party will help or hinder it. The BSW’s overall popularity has risen marginally since her resignation as leader, hovering now at 3.5%. Ultimately, the party has little to lose; a comeback after such a stinging defeat would be a long shot. But with new leadership and a clear, cohesive platform, the BSW could have another chance to become the kingmaker Wagenknecht always hoped it would be. She will just not be on the throne.

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