Young women voters were a driving force behind the victory in Berlin on Sunday for the far-left Die Linke party, the descendant of East Germany’s former communist ruling party. For the first time since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a plurality of voters in the German capital backed a radical socialist party in a state election, with Die Linke (The Left) comfortably sailing to a win over the faltering Christian Democrats of Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
The far-left party, a reformulation of the Socialist Unity Party, which once ruled with an iron fist for four decades over the Soviet satellite state of East Germany, took in 25.7 per cent of the vote, up from 12.2 in 2023. In comparison, just 18.8 per cent backed the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), down from 28.2 per cent three years ago. Die Linke was bolstered largely by the youth vote, with exit polls finding that the party won 43 per cent of the under-25 vote in Berlin, up 25 points from the last election. The party performed even better among the 25 to 34-year-old age bracket, winning 49 per cent of the vote, Tagesschau reports. They also dominated among first-time voters at 39 per cent, with the Greens coming in a distant second at 14 per cent. Meanwhile, the Christian Democrats won the most votes of any party among those over 60 with 29 per cent, while winning only 8 per cent of voters under 25.
