Muslim voters were a major contributing factor to the far-left Die Linke party’s victory in the Berlin elections last week, an analysis of religious affiliation exit polling has revealed.
According to data collected by the Wahlen research group and obtained by the Catholic News Agency (KNA), Die Linke (The Left) won 51 per cent of Muslim voters in last Sunday’s Berlin elections, meaning that if only Muslims voted, the radical leftist party would have won an absolute governing majority in the Berlin state parliament.
While there is no official data, it has been estimated that Muslims make up around 10 per cent of the overall population of Berlin, making them a significant voting bloc.
Die Linke also performed well among non-religious voters, with 28 per cent of the atheist/agnostic vote backing the far-left socialist party.
Conversely, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won both Catholic and Protestant voters in the German capital, at 30 per cent among Catholics and 27 per cent among Protestants. This compares with 17 and 16 per cent of the same groups backing Die Linke, meaning that if only Christians had voted, the CDU would have comfortably won.
The far-left party, a direct descendant of the now-defunct Socialist Unity Party that ruled the oppressive Soviet East German communist state for decades, was also bolstered by the young female vote in Berlin. Separate exit polling results found that 51 per cent of women voters under 25 cast their ballot for Die Linke. This compared to 34 per cent of young men.
Overall, Die Linke won the most votes among young voters, winning 43 per cent of the under-25 vote and 49 per cent of the 25-34 vote.
It comes as the leftist party is seeking to form a coalition government in Berlin with the establishment left Social Democrats (SPD) and the enviro-left Greens, with Die Linke’s state executive committee voting on Friday in favour of opening “exploratory talks” with the fellow left-wing parties, Die Welt reported.
While broadly aligned, some friction appears to remain on the coalition-building front, particularly over accusations of antisemitism against Die Linke, which SPD Deputy Chairman Alexander Schweitzer has said is a “clear problem” within the far-left party.
Schweitzer has said: “It has to resolve this. Only then can the SPD accept it as a coalition partner in Berlin.”
The Social Democrat leader said that there is room to express “perfectly legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy”, but said that denial of Israel’s right to exist would go against the “post-war democratic consensus in Germany.” Die Linke’s lead candidate in the elections and potentially the next mayor of Berlin, Turkish-heritage Elif Eralp, denied that her party has an issue with antisemitism, saying that “as leftists, our empathy extends to all people”.
The prospect of a potentially antisemitic government in Berlin is not the only concern raised about Die Linke taking power.
According to reports, Berlin police officials have expressed deep shock at the election outcome and have raised doubts about their ability to continue fighting crime under Die Linke’s “woke” leadership. While its predecessor presided over one of the most brutal police forces in modern history, East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, otherwise known as the Stasi, the rebranded Die Linke has since adopted a defund the police ethic with an increased focus on social care in crime-prone communities.
Die Welt noted that there are particular concerns over the issue of clan crime groups among Turkish and other ethnic minorities in the city. Die Linke has claimed that the categorisation of such organised crime groups under the banner of clan crime as being “problematic” and has suggested that police raids on shisha bars may have come as a result of racism.
Sensationally, during the election night party for the Neukölln district branch of Die Linke in Berlin last Sunday, an alleged clan boss, Issa Remmo, appeared at the function, broadcaster NDR confirmed. However, the leftist party said that the purported head of the infamous Lebanese-heritage Remmo family was not invited by Die Linke and that the party was open to the public.
Remmo said that he decided to go to the event on his own initiative because he felt “supported by a party for the first time in Germany” and wanted to show his support for Die Linke against the accusations of antisemitism.