BSW leader questions election validity after narrow Bundestag miss

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which missed the Bundestag by approximately 13,000 votes and secured 4.97% of the vote, issued its first official statement on the elections today.

BSW leader Wagenknecht is calling for a legal review of the election results, citing that many Germans residing abroad were unable to vote due to restrictive time constraints.

“If a party is expelled from the Bundestag because it received 13,400 fewer votes, this raises the question of the legal validity of the election result. We will analyze this and consult legal experts,” Wagenknecht stated at the press conference.

While Wagenknecht was self-critical regarding her party’s electoral performance, she also strongly criticized the media and polling agencies.

Shortly before election day, Forsa published a poll indicating BSW support at 3%. Wagenknecht characterized this as “a targeted campaign to manipulate voting behavior,” emphasizing that this figure fell outside the typical margin of error for polls.

Wagenknecht also made several accusations against the media. She contended that since the autumn, an “unprecedented” negative media campaign had been directed against her party and herself, alleging that her party had been labeled “pro-Putin,” had a “distorted image” portrayed, and had its “prospects for success systematically lowered.”

Wagenknecht asserted that “every opportunity for negative news, no matter how trivial, is widely publicized nationwide, while the party’s content is no longer reported.”

The German Journalists’ Association (DJV) rejected the accusations against the media. “The reporting in this election has certainly taken place under difficult circumstances, but in our view, it has been of a high standard and, thanks to the new formats, the smaller parties have also received more coverage,” DJV President Mika Beuster said on Monday.

Beuster maintained that Wagenknecht was, among other things, a regular guest on talk shows and therefore could not complain about the lack of media coverage.

Referring to the circulation of initial figures on social media early Sunday, which purportedly predicted the BSW’s failure and were allegedly falsified, Wagenknecht described this as “similarly arrogant and, in this case, criminally appropriate.”

Wagenknecht did not directly answer a journalist’s question about whether she would resign. “I know that they would very much like to hear that now, and that is precisely why I will not do them that favor,” Wagenknecht responded.

At the beginning of the press conference, Wagenknecht also acknowledged the party’s own shortcomings. “A young party loses particularly quickly when high expectations are not realized,” she said, referencing, for example, the dilemma surrounding discussions on participation in government in the East German states.

Approximately 213,000 voters abroad had applied for postal voting certificates, but many were apparently unable to cast their votes in time for the snap election due to insufficient time.

Before the election, constitutional lawyers indicated that this presented an opportunity for a retrospective complaint.

According to Infratest Dimap, approximately 400,000 votes for the BSW came from individuals who had not previously voted, compared to 440,000 for the SPD, around 350,000 for the Left Party, and around 260,000 for the FDP. The CDU/CSU lost around 220,000 voters to the BSW, while the Greens and AfD lost around 150,000 and 60,000 votes, respectively.