Die Linke wins in Berlin promising to expropriate housing and demonstrates that the left can also dispute the vote of discontent

Rent has led Die Linke to win Berlin. The party of Elif Eralp was the most voted this Sunday in the German capital after a campaign that promised to set limits on large landlords and recover housing for public control. Her victory strikes the CDU, which governed the city alongside the SPD, and offers a left-wing response to a discontent that is also fueling the far-right.

Die Linke obtained 25.7% of the votes, compared to 12.2% in 2023. The CDU fell to 18.8%; the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) rose to 16.3%; the Greens achieved 14.3% and the SPD came fifth with 12.1%. According to the provisional result, the left will have 47 of the 158 seats in the Berlin Parliament. It has won clearly, although it will need partners to bring Eralp to government.

A lawyer and daughter of Turkish political refugees, Eralp has campaigned in neighborhoods and around a question close to many of her neighbors: who can afford to continue living in Berlin. Die Linke came to these elections after difficult years, including the split of Sahra Wagenknecht. It also carried its own history regarding housing. The candidate acknowledged as a mistake that her party participated two decades ago in the sale of a large public housing company. Now she calls for recovering power from the real estate companies that dominate the market.

Housing, at the center of the campaign

The pressure of rent has concrete figures. According to the public bank Investitionsbank Berlin, the median price of homes advertised for rent went from 9 euros per square meter in 2016 to 15.78 in 2025. This is a 75.3% increase for those looking for an apartment; the data measures new offers, not what all tenants with previous contracts pay. In a city where most people rent, finding another home has become an economic problem and also the fear of having to leave the neighborhood.

Eralp proposes freezing rents for public housing companies for one year and then limiting their increases. She also wants to strengthen the monitoring of illegal prices and socialize, with compensation, about 220,000 homes from large private companies. She thus revives a demand that Berlin already voted on in 2021. That referendum, favorable with 57.6% of the votes cast, called for drafting a law to transfer these properties to the public sphere, but its result did not oblige the Government to approve it.

The campaign added presence in tenant meetings and door-to-door tours to those promises. The reach is seen in the participation, which went from 62.9% to 74.2%. Infratest dimap's vote transfer model estimates that Die Linke attracted some 75,000 former abstainers, in addition to Green and SPD voters. These are survey estimates, but they show that Eralp grew beyond the voters his party already had.

The youth vote was decisive. According to Infratest dimap's post-election analysis, Die Linke reached 49% among voters aged 25 to 34 and 43% among those aged 16 to 24. The rising cost of housing especially affects those trying to become independent or change apartments. Eralp managed to turn that daily difficulty into a reason to go to the polls.

The far-right AfD also grows and Merz prepares his response

The other side of Sunday forces us to look beyond Berlin. The AfD won in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with 38.2%, ahead of regional president Manuela Schwesig's SPD, which obtained 35.5%. The CDU remained at 4.9% and out of that Parliament, for the first time in its history in a federal state. In Berlin, the far-right gained more than seven points compared to 2023 and was the most voted option among workers, with 29% according to Infratest dimap.

The two elections leave Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU in a bad light, but tell different stories about the fate of the discontented vote. In Berlin, Infratest's estimate attributes some 75,000 votes from former abstainers to Die Linke; the AfD would have received some 61,000 and another 60,000 from people who previously voted for the CDU. The left has been able to mobilize discontent in the capital with a response on rents. In Mecklenburg, Die Linke remained at 6.5% and it was the AfD that made the big leap.

For Eralp, the immediate test will be to form a government. Die Linke, Greens, and SPD would add up to 95 seats, a comfortable majority on paper. The conflict is over housing: the Social Democratic candidate, Steffen Krach, rejects socializing large real estate companies. There is also an alternative majority of CDU, Greens, and SPD, much tighter. And, even with a political agreement, transferring those apartments to public control would require resolving the cost of compensation and accompanying the measure with more affordable housing.

Merz has already intervened in that dispute. This Monday he announced that his Government is preparing a federal law to prevent the socialization of large housing companies. It is, for now, an announced project, while Eralp maintains his commitment and admits that he will have to negotiate. The promise that gave Die Linke a position of strength at the polls will also be the most difficult issue to close with the SPD.

The Spanish left looks to Berlin

The result has had an immediate echo in Spain. The federal coordinator of IU, Antonio Maíllo, sees in the victory a backing for intervening in housing and curbing speculation. Más Madrid and Movimiento Sumar have highlighted the strength of Die Linke among young people and its confrontation with large landlords. These are reactions at a time when these parties are demanding more forceful measures from the Spanish Government to lower rents.

Podemos has made a similar reading, although it remains politically opposed to the Sumar space. Irene Montero has pointed out the promise to lower rents and expropriate homes hoarded by investment funds; Ione Belarra asks to follow that example against large speculators. Gabriel Rufián, from ERC, has claimed a left capable of concentrating on people's problems and translating their proposals into laws.

Berlin offers all of them a powerful case, with its limits. Eralp contested a regional election in a city of tenants, built a neighborhood campaign and had a demand backed for five years by a referendum. In Spain, Sumar and Podemos still fail to agree on a common candidacy for the general elections, while their differences with the PSOE on housing have a recent parliamentary test. Last week, Congress rejected Sumar's proposal to prevent investment funds from buying homes; the PSOE abstained.