This Monday, Sahra Wagenknecht’s party will officially see the light of day, with a first federal party conference following on January 27th in Berlin. What chances does the new party have, where will it be located in the party system, what does its target group look like? The party researcher Sarah Wagner has studied the party, which does not yet exist, scientifically. She says: Sahra Wagenknecht and her party are encountering a “huge representation gap”.
ntv.de: Is Sahra Wagenknecht left or right or something else?
Sarah Wagner: That is the question that led to the split in the Left Party, because there were very different answers to what it means to be left-wing.
Sarah Wagner is a political scientist who focuses on left-wing radical parties and their relationship to nationalist positions. She conducts research as an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University Belfast.
(Photo: private)
What’s on the left?
I have to answer that in a bit of a boring political science way. Today, parties have to cover a lot of different topics. On the one hand, there are the classic economic issues such as the distribution of resources, the relationship between the state and the market and the like. Such questions have defined for decades whether a party is right or left.
Is that no longer enough today?
No. Since the 1990s at the latest, we have increasingly focused on topics that do not fit into this economic axis: migration, environmental protection, rights for minorities, to name just a few examples. These are socio-cultural issues that also define the political position of a party. In political science we therefore work with a coordinate system in which economic topics form one axis and socio-cultural topics form the other.
You and two colleagues also have such a coordinate system for one Study about the future Wagenknecht party used.
On the economic axis, parties are on the left when, for example, they advocate a higher top tax rate for the wealthy or demand more support for people in precarious working situations. But there are also socio-cultural issues that are often perceived as “left-wing”: a liberal migration policy, for example, or more environmental protection. It’s a combination we’ve gotten used to. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only possible combination.
Are there successful role models for a Wagenknecht party in other European countries?
Today, economically left-wing parties are usually also socio-culturally progressive, but the other combination still exists. For example the Greek communists, the KKE. In 2015, the party voted against marriage for all. Another example is the Socialist Party of the Netherlands. Especially at the local level, the SP is committed to ensuring that fewer refugees come and that migrants who stay in the Netherlands assimilate as much as possible – both positions that are more associated with right-wing parties. The SP was quite successful with this; just a few years ago it was the third strongest force. However, in the November elections it only achieved 3 percent. Most of their voters have migrated to Geert Wilders’ PVV, the right-wing radical party that won the election. We could also see something similar in Germany.
Do you mean that voters have migrated from the Left to the AfD?
In the 2017 federal election alone, the Left lost 430,000 voters to the AfD. If you imagine political positions on the right-left axis alone, these voters seem to have come a long way. But in the two-dimensional coordinate system, one can easily see that the path is not that far for voters focused on socio-cultural issues.
In their study, they call a future Wagenknecht party “left-authoritarian” and place it in the “left-authoritarian quadrant”. What is left-wing authoritarian about Sahra Wagenknecht?
I now regret a bit that we chose this term. This is the established term for the upper section of the vertical axis of the coordinate system; we did not invent it. This does not mean that the parties located in these quadrants are necessarily anti-democratic. Most of the time they are not. They are traditional, conservative, often nationalistic, sometimes authoritarian. The better term for a Wagenknecht party would probably be left-wing conservative – a term that Sahra Wagenknecht also uses.
The special thing about the Wagenknecht party would be that it would have a quadrant all to itself and would therefore fill a gap in the market.
Correct. There is a huge representation gap here – not just in Germany, but also in many other countries. It is easy to imagine that there are many voters who have economically left-wing ideas, but at the same time see themselves as socio-culturally conservative. Until now, such voters have had to choose between these two basic beliefs: They could vote for a party that is skeptical or rejects migration, or a party that wants to tax the rich more heavily. As socio-cultural issues have become more prominent in recent years, this decision has increasingly turned out to be in favor of the AfD and to the detriment of the Left.
There are surveys that attribute a potential of up to 27 percent to a Wagenknecht party. What would be your prediction? And how reliable are such assessments?
The survey forecasts included everything from “Sahra Wagenknecht will win the election in Thuringia” to “a Wagenknecht party will collapse”. In general, polls are important, but when it comes to a party that doesn’t yet exist, they are also extremely unreliable. At the moment, the idea of a Wagenknecht party is simply a huge projection surface. That’s why I think it’s dubious to commit to a specific number. What I find more interesting than the question of what percentage a Wagenknecht party will get is how it will line up.
In what way?
In political science there are two different types of parties. There are the so-called coalition parties that want to govern. And there are the “blackmail parties”, even if the term is a bit nasty.
“Blackmail” means something like blackmail.
These parties do not primarily strive for power; they primarily want to change the discourse of the other parties. The AfD was very successful in this. With regard to Sahra Wagenknecht, it will be exciting to see whether she just wants to shift the discourse or actually co-govern.
Can you say what typical Wagenknecht supporters look like and what political views they have?
In our study we clearly saw that the more dissatisfied people are with democracy, the more likely they are to support a potential Wagenknecht party. This does not mean that these people are all anti-democratic. Many of them probably feel unrepresented. A potential Wagenknecht party also has more supporters in East Germany, which on the one hand is not surprising, but on the other hand is very important for Wagenknecht because there are three state elections in East Germany in September. In addition, there are the European elections in the summer, where there is no five percent threshold. Sahra Wagenknecht could hardly have found a better time for a new party.
Which party could a Wagenknecht party form a coalition with?
Sahra Wagenknecht has made it clear that she sees the Greens as an enemy, which makes strategic sense for her: On the socio-cultural axis, the Greens are as far away from her as a party can be. And we have also heard that she is toying with CDU/CSU positions. I think it is very unlikely that she would form a coalition with the AfD. If only because it could make your party superfluous. In our study we saw that voter migration from the AfD to a potential Wagenknecht party is most likely – much more likely than from the Left. The AfD now has some regular voters, probably more than we usually imagine. But there are also some AfD supporters who don’t feel comfortable with people like Björn Höcke.
When Sahra Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer called for a demonstration against arms deliveries to Ukraine a year ago, right-wing extremists also came – as far as they could tell, only as a minority, but they were there. At the time, Wagenknecht was accused of giving voice to a “cross front” of left- and right-wing extremists. Do you think this is a realistic description?
The risk of such an alliance exists, but I believe that Sahra Wagenknecht herself also sees it as a potential problem. Not only because she wants to win AfD voters for her party, but also because it would give her party a dubious image. The association that is preparing to found the party is already making sure not to be infiltrated by any figures from the Querfron bubble. However, we will only see in the future how successful this will be.
The association is called the “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht”. The party isn’t supposed to be called that, but would it have been a good idea to call it that?
On the one hand, the focus on Sahra Wagenknecht is very helpful for founding the party. Sahra Wagenknecht has been on all sorts of talk shows for years, giving interviews and being very present. Voters know what she stands for. Other politicians would have to use much more resources and effort to promote a new party and communicate what that party stands for. Sahra Wagenknecht has already completed this feat of strength. On the other hand, it would not be a strategically wise long-term strategy. Parties that are only associated with one person usually only survive a few legislative periods. In order to ensure the long-term existence of a party, you always need new people and innovative ideas. That’s why it seems to me to make sense to name the club after Sahra Wagenknecht, but not the party.
Can the Sahra-Wagenknecht party be seen as an opportunity to stop the growth of the AfD?
I find it difficult to describe Sahra Wagenknecht as a figurehead of democracy. It could happen that the AfD becomes significantly smaller because so many people move from the AfD to Sahra Wagenknecht. But it could also happen that AfD positions slip even more into the mainstream because there is another party that is committed to these issues. And the existence of a Wagenknecht party could also lead to the AfD becoming even more extreme.
How do you see the chances for the existing Left Party? Will she disappear?
I believe that the separation from Sahra Wagenknecht will have a long-term positive effect on the Left Party. In the short term, the loss of parliamentary group status is of course painful for the party. But through the separation, the left can reposition itself. The timing could hardly be better for the Left: For various reasons, many SPD and Green voters are dissatisfied with their previous parties. The Left now has the chance to present itself as a progressive alternative – without being constantly paralyzed by the dispute with the Wagenknecht wing.
Hubertus Volmer spoke to Sarah Wagner