BERLIN — A mayor’s race. A Muslim candidate from the left. A promise to make one of the world’s great cities affordable again.
Sound familiar? This time it’s not New York. It’s Berlin, where Elif Eralp, Die Linke’s candidate, is running to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, as well as the first Left Party mayor since the city’s reunification. Recent polling shows her leading with 20.7% of the vote against the Christian Democratic Union of Germany Party and the Alternative for Germany party, which are polling around 18.9% and 17.6%, respectively.
The Sept. 20 election echoes the race that gripped America last year, when political newcomer Zohran Mamdani toppled former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and rewrote the rules of what a mayoral campaign could look like.
In several interviews, Die Linke’s party members have made clear they drew inspiration from Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign, first from afar and then much closer to New York’s City Hall. Party co-chair Ines Schwerdtner traveled to New York with other party officials to watch the Mamdani operation up close.
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Schwerdtner went last fall to learn more about efforts by the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as New York’s progressive Working Families Party, to expand their bases of support in the city and the U.S. more broadly.
“We embrace Mamdani’s victory,” said Janis Ehling, the Die Linke federal managing director, which is the equivalent of an executive director for a party in the U.S. “We learned a lot [from] them, especially when it comes to community organizing, door-knocking, canvassing campaigns.”
“I think we’re going in the same direction,” Ehling told NOTUS.
A far-left candidate breaking through in Germany’s capital city would stand in contrast to what’s happening in the state government, where the far right appears to be surging.
“It would be really significant for German politics as a whole when you think of [World War II history],” said Thorsten Holzhauser, a historian and political scientist in Germany.
“They have tried to play down identity politics and parts of their agenda,” he said of Die Linke, “and highlight the more economic and social issues such as housing, such as cost of living, things that are important to middle-class voters and working-class voters at the same time.”
While elections operate completely differently in Germany than in the United States — voters cast ballots for the party rather than the candidate — Die Linke has selected Eralp to represent them in the election.
“We have the chance to have a Left mayor in Berlin, and that’s a huge chance,” Ehling said. “In Germany, the far right is rising too, and that would be a big symbol of hope for all over Germany, like Mamdani was in the United States.”
Grace Mausser, co-chair of New York City’s DSA chapter, told NOTUS that she sees similarities in the United States’ and Germany’s partisan politics.
“I think it’s critical that we not only inspire each other and give each other encouragement as we’re working in sometimes dangerous conditions, yeah, but also that our work compounds each other and doesn’t take away from what each is doing,” she said.
The comparison is one that the Die Linke party officials have leaned into publicly. When Mamdani won in November, the party’s Berlin branch posted on X, translated into English, “Whether New York or Berlin: We all want affordable rents and a good life for our families and friends!” Eralp said in interviews that she sees Mamdani’s win as an example for left candidates.
Part of the Die Linke party’s appeal in Berlin is Eralp’s pledge to force corporations to own fewer apartments to help lower housing costs. She’s paired that with a push for rent caps on public housing, a new city office for tenant protection and a discounted transit pass, a platform that is gaining traction in the city that’s faced an affordability crisis.
Beyond Eralp’s affordability proposals, Mausser said, her immigrant background also resonates with voters.
“One thing I found interesting in the Berlin mayoral election specifically is the potential to activate and politicize an immigrant population within the city,” Mausser told NOTUS. “We saw that with Zohran activating and politicizing a Muslim and Southeast Asian voter base, and I think Elif has the potential to do that with the Turkish voter base in Berlin.”
She added: “That to me is so important because the right wing explicitly doesn’t want people who are not coded as a native to their home country to be able to vote, to have a political voice. So a figure like Zohran, a figure like Elif, a figure like [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], who is obviously Hispanic and will speak to that population, them running proudly as non-white people in majority white countries, I think it sends an important signal on who belongs in each of those places.”
Holzhauser, the political scientist, sought to temper expectations of what a Die Linke victory could yield, saying that Germany’s coalition system of governing will make it nearly impossible to enact Eralp’s and Die Linke’s proposed policies.
“It will be very difficult for Die Linke to realize and to bring forward their agenda in such a coalition,” he said. “Especially when it comes to housing, when it comes to the very controversial issue of expropriating major players in the housing sector, which is a very important issue for Die Linke, but which has been opposed by every other party and especially by the potential partners.”
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