When prominent left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht announced that she was founding her own party last year, it was — some said — the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) that had the most cause for concern.

Political analysts have been arguing that the unique position of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — left-wing on economic issues but closer to the far-right on issues like immigration and gender diversity — may pose a threat to the AfD. The European election on June 9 was the first big test of that theory.

Wagenknecht celebrated the European election on Sunday as a victory after she took over 6% of the German vote in the preliminary results, giving the BSW six of Germany's 96 seats in the European Parliament. "This is a fantastic result," she told public broadcaster ZDF. "It was difficult: We were a long way down on the ballot papers, our supporters weren't interested in the European election, at least that's what the surveys said. But now we know how right and necessary it was for us to found this new party."

At a press conference in Berlin in late April, Wagenknecht explained her own phenomenon in characteristically well-honed yet simple terms. "It's clear that we have a government that is very unpopular," she told a group of reporters. "The German economy is in a crisis … we've had above-average inflation, and the government parties have dropped very severely. And of course, that has led to the AfD and the far-right of the spectrum being strengthened a lot."

Her decision to split from the Left Party, whose parliamentary group she once led, decimated the socialist party's Bundestag representation and may have destroyed it as a significant political force in the future — 10 of the Left........

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