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Heidi Reichinnek (in the middle) is delighted with the election results.
KEYSTONE
The Left Party achieved its best result in years in the Bundestag elections with 8.8 percent. They owe this to Heidi Reichinnek, among others. Who is the top politician and how did she get there?
The Left Party received more than eight percent of the popular vote in the Bundestag elections. This means that the party easily makes it over the five percent hurdle. Among 18-24-year-olds, it even became the strongest party by far with 27%.
How was a party that was considered politically dead able to regain popularity in such a short space of time and gain thousands of new members since January?
One reason for this surprising success is Heidi Reichinnek. The 36-year-old has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2021 and co-chair of the Left Party together with Jan van Aken since February 2024.
The lead candidate also knows exactly how to use social media channels. A speech that Reichinnek gave in the Bundestag at the end of January 2025 attracted a lot of attention.
When the CDU/CSU parliamentary group pushed through a motion to tighten asylum policy with the votes of the AfD, Reichinnek said to CDU leader Friedrich Merz: "These are not random majorities, they were looking for this majority." Her appeal: "Resist fascism in this country. To the barricades." The video of her speech was clicked on over 30 million times on TikTok.
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Shortly afterwards, more and more members joined. Since January 2025, Die Linke has registered over 20,000 new members, including many young people in particular.
Reichinneks' strategy for young people? Combining politics with pop culture. She wears friendship bracelets reminiscent of Taylor Swift fans, posts memes, talks about her favorite metal band "Subway to Sally" and shows off her tattoos of Rosa Luxemburg and a gas mask as a tribute to the Arab Spring.
At the same time, she remains consistently left-wing: She calls for rent caps, tax relief, price controls and social justice. She manages to convey complex issues in an emotional and accessible way. It becomes tangible for young people. And that is precisely her goal: to get young people interested in politics. She is becoming the symbolic figure of a "new left".
Heidi Reichinnek was born in Mersburg, a town in southern Saxony-Anhalt. Her career began with campaigning against Hartz IV and social injustice. This was followed by stints in local politics in Osnabrück and the role of state chairwoman in Lower Saxony.
For Die Linke, she was a key factor in their re-entry into the Bundestag. After the split caused by Sahra Wagenknecht and the founding of the "Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance", the party was in danger of losing a massive amount of support.
In some polls, the party even fell below the 5 percent mark. Parties that receive less than five percent of the second votes in elections in Germany are not allowed to enter the Bundestag. This is regulated by the five percent hurdle as a blocking clause in the Federal Elections Act.
Thanks to Reichinnek and "Mission Silberlocke" - an initiative by Left Party politicians Gregor Gysi, Bodo Ramelow and Dietmar Bartsch, which aimed to bring the party back into the Bundestag through direct mandates and a sympathy campaign - the poll ratings rose again.
In an interview with the "Rheinische Post" newspaper, she commented on the rise of the Left in the polls with the words: "I don't have to believe in miracles, I'm experiencing them." This miracle was finally confirmed by the actual result of the federal election, in which the party achieved 8.8 percent of the vote.
