Berlin’s answer to Zohran Mamdani could help carry a far-left, anti-capitalist party to first place in Sunday’s regional elections after a campaign that has harnessed anger over soaring rents and the insurgent far right.
Elif Eralp, lead candidate for the Left party (Die Linke), could become the first mayor of Turkish descent in a city of 3.9 million people that is home to the largest Turkish community outside Turkey. Her migrant background, trendy look and hard-left agenda have drawn comparisons with Mamdani, the Democratic New York mayor whose campaign energised the US left.
“The success of a democratic socialist in New York, the heartland of capitalism, is a huge achievement,” Eralp told journalists last week. “We’ve exchanged a lot of ideas,” she added. Mamdani’s campaign strategist visited Berlin to advise her and her party in the spring.
Polls suggest the Left is neck-and-neck with chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who won the last election in the traditionally left-wing city for the first time in more than two decades.
READ MORE
But the CDU has been weighed down by a deeply unpopular Berlin mayor, as well as nationwide discontent with Merz. The chancellor is struggling to quell a party rebellion that could intensify if the CDU performs poorly in Sunday’s twin elections in Berlin and the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The Left traces its roots to the communist SED, which ruled East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But over the past three years it has undergone a striking generational shift.
The party’s leadership has been replaced by a younger cohort, including several high-profile women whose attacks on the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) have helped turn them into social media stars on the German left.
Eralp, the daughter of Turkish leftists who fled their country after the 1980 coup, said she joined the Left party in 2017 on the day the AfD first entered the German parliament.
She and other leading party figures have cultivated a recognisable style: sharp fringes, tattoos, hoop earrings and red lipstick. Eralp (45) often pairs jeans and trainers with a bomber jacket and a slick of Red Poppy, her favourite shade.
The Left’s overhaul has seen the party draw a tidal wave of new supporters, doubling its membership in the space of a year, reaching 123,000 at the end of 2025.
“Die Linke used to be a party of East German pensioners, often living in the countryside,” said Markus Kollberg, a political scientist at Humboldt University. “Now its typical voter is a young woman living in the city. The party has changed completely.”
In Berlin, the Left party’s vow to expropriate 220,000 apartments from “brazen” corporate landlords has struck a chord with young voters.
The city was renowned in the 1980s and 1990s for its empty spaces, cheap rents and squats, which drew artists and techno ravers and made the city a centre of European counterculture.
But population growth and private investment have transformed its housing market over the past two decades, pushing up rents.
In 2021, 58 per cent of Berliners voted yes in a referendum calling for the expropriation of apartments owned by corporate landlords.
The Left said it wanted to act on that mandate by seizing property from real estate investors such as the Dax-listed Vonovia, which owns about 130,000 residential units in Berlin.
The cost of the plan is fiercely disputed, with estimates ranging from €7 billion to €36 billion. The Left says the money would be gradually recouped by the rental income that the city would receive.
Eralp – who wears a gold necklace with the word Mietendeckel, rent cap – also wants to impose such a limit on the city’s 400,000 publicly owned flats.
The party’s expropriation plans, which would face an array of legal challenges, have triggered alarm among business leaders. A group of banks warned in June that the party was “playing with fire” and risked deterring investment and new construction.
The policy has helped galvanise Berliners such as Lukas (25), who was among about 40 people attending their first Left meeting last week at the party’s headquarters, Karl Liebknecht House – named after the revolutionary who cofounded the German Communist Party and was later killed by far-right paramilitaries.
Lukas said his experience living in a “s**t” Vonovia-owned apartment had made him willing to test expropriation, even as he conceded it was unclear whether it would work.
Others at the welcome evening, which ended with a barbecue in the backyard, said the AfD’s victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month had pushed them into party politics.
Even in Berlin, polls put support for the AfD at about 18 per cent.
Kollberg, the political scientist, said that could be explained by the contrast between the city’s inner areas and the outer suburbs: “Outside it’s the AfD versus the CDU.”
The Left has also drawn support through its highly critical stance towards what Eralp calls the “right-wing extremist” government in Israel and its actions in Gaza.
On Ukraine, the party has moderated its position compared with its more Russia-friendly old guard. It opposes weapons deliveries to Kyiv and wants to disband Nato, but explicitly blames Russia for the conflict and supports some sanctions on Moscow.
Even if the Left comes first, it is unclear whether Eralp would become mayor. The CDU could still try to find coalition partners to assemble a majority in the regional assembly.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) lead candidate, Steffen Krach, has strongly opposed the Left’s expropriation plans, raising the possibility that his party could mirror the federal coalition and join the CDU rather than an Eralp-led government.
Krach has been weakened, however, by police raids on his home and offices as part of an investigation into possible corruption related to a public tender. He denies the allegations.
Eralp said she was banking on other left-leaning parties reaching an agreement with the Left party. “Ultimately, if we become the strongest force in Berlin, then our policies will also have won.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
[ Merz is on the ropes. Could Sunday's regional elections deliver a knockout blow?Opens in new window ]
