On these notes, can someone tell me why Linke is doing so poorly while it is Grüne the one that is gaining from the SPD collapse?
If you are one of the people abandoning the "SPD sellouts who always go with CDU" it makes no sense to vote Grüne, who will just as easily do coalitions with CDU?*
Is Linke still suffering from DDR stigma? Fear of Linke being a pariah party like AfD? Or is it something else?
*: Or actually even more so, one of my impressions from green parties in Europe is that they tend to "sell out" even easier than the socdem parties
Because the Greens and die Linke are completely different parties. Die Linke is unambiguously a left-wing, socialist party, whereas it is doubtful whether the Greens are even to the left of the SPD any more; they are essentially a moderate social liberal party. Their voter bases are completely different; the most fundamental difference is that die Linke are an East-based party, whereas the Greens’ strongholds are in the West, and more broadly the Greens’ coalition is significantly more upscale and educated. Whereas die Linke are probably competing with the AfD for a good amount of votes, the Greens have been able to pick off upper middle class professionals from the CDU. I would say that the Greens now have the bulk of younger centre-left voters, and it is mostly older people sticking with the SPD.
