Wagenknecht party in first crisis - is its BSW project collapsing like a house of cards?

The West Wagenknecht party in first crisis - is its BSW project collapsing like a house of cards? Marcel Görmann • 13 hours • 2 minutes reading time Is Sahra Wagenknecht's project failing? Her new party BSW is stumbling in polls and in East Germany the coalition negotiations with the CDU and SPD are going more than bumpy. In Saxony the talks have already ended unsuccessfully, in Thuringia there was recently an open power struggle between the party founder and the state leader Katja Wolf. Now even nationwide polls do not see the BSW in the fast lane. So far the party has not been able to benefit from the traffic light coalition's end. What's more: the early election puts the young party under additional pressure. Wagenknecht's troops must now set up state associations at a rapid pace The Wagenknecht party must set up four state associations at a rapid pace that do not yet exist. This concerns the party structures in Bavaria, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. At least the development of a federal election program has already begun, according to a party leader. In addition to the organizational challenges, fresh polls are a real dampener for the Wagenknecht team. In the latest Forsa survey for RTL and n-tv, the party even slipped to 5 percent (-1). This would even put the party's entry into the Bundestag as a parliamentary group in danger! BSW: Poll dampener after traffic light vote Other polling institutes are also looking anything but rosy for the BSW, around three months before the election date on February 23. At INSA for "Bild", the team is at least at 7 percent, while at ARD and ZDF it was recently at just 6 percent. This would put the BSW roughly in the range of the result from the 2024 European elections, when the party came in at 6.2 percent. On the one hand, a respectable result from the start - but not a high point either. The decisive factor now could be how capable the party is of forming coalitions and shaping things in Thuringia and Brandenburg. Otherwise, disillusionment could set in. It is questionable whether Wagenknecht will stand as a candidate for chancellor under these circumstances. Most recently, she mocked Robert Habeck's candidacy in light of the Greens' mediocre poll results. At the same time, however, she left it open whether the BSW would follow suit if the other parties did the same. At the moment, the BSW looks like a house of cards - only Wagenknecht as a person provides some stability. But the first conflicts in Thuringia are already showing how shaky the whole structure is.