Competing for Germany's Left Authoritarians: Mainstream Party Reactions to Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht's New Political Position

After leaving the German Left Party some months earlier, its former parliamentary party group co-leader Sahra Wagenknecht founded a new party named after her (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, BSW) in January 2024. BSW combines left-wing economic stances with a socially conservative outlook and a sceptical stance on immigration, a previously unoccupied position in the German policy space as well as an underused niche in other countries (Kurella & Rosset 2017, Lefkofridi et al. 2014). Headed by a well-known political figure and garnering media attention, the appearance of BSW marks the first promising party foundation in Germany in eleven years. This offers a rare opportunity to observe the fledgling of a new party in real time and analyse the reaction of mainstream parties to the rise of a new challenger. It is a particularly interesting case, since most recent Western European challenger parties have emerged on the far right, mobilising predominantly on an anti-immigration platform. Voters with left-wing economic positions and socially traditional, authoritarian or nationalist (TAN) positions are "cross-pressured" between their two positions, forcing them to prioritise one of the two issue dimensions. Hence, BSW has the potential to attract voters from both the left and the right; however, those voters would not be motivated by the same issues. Therefore, contrary to other challenger parties, not all parties are faced with the same strategic choice when it comes to accommodating or opposing the challenger. The centre-left are likely to lose voters who currently prioritise left-wing positions over their TAN positions on social issues and immigration. Therefore, the more BSW becomes a threat, the more they should emphasise economic issues, where they are likely to enjoy a valence advantage due to their proven track record. For the right, voters that currently vote right-wing due to prioritising TAN positions over economic policy are at risk of defecting to BSW. These parties thus have an incentive to emphasise immigration and social issues. To examine these expectations, the empirical part of the paper will focus on tracking BSW's first campaign during the 2024 European Parliament elections, and the reactions of other parties. Data sources will include the manifestos published by German parties, party press releases, and public speeches. These sources will be complemented by analysis of media coverage and public surveys to assess the salience of issues and public opinion on the parties. Using a quantitative text analysis approach to measure the emphasis parties put on various issues, and the positions they take, I will compare these positions to the threat posed by BSW as measured through opinion polling and voter surveys. This will shed light on how mainstream parties find their initial positions when confronted with a new challenger. Therefore, this study will contribute both to the literature on challenger parties and issue entrepreneurship, as well as the literature on left-TAN voters. The findings have implications beyond the German case, as left parties in other countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands also look to position themselves as Left-TAN parties.