Overview
- Fabio de Masi is running for party leader at this weekend’s Magdeburg congress, with a plan that could pair him with Amira Mohamed Ali if Sahra Wagenknecht shifts to strategic work.
- The planned renaming to remove Wagenknecht’s name was postponed by at least a year, and she will continue shaping the party’s brand.
- De Masi seeks to expand BSW’s appeal to voters from the AfD, SPD and Die Linke, and he criticizes the party’s past focus as a “pure election machine.”
- Rifts with the Thuringian branch are set to surface publicly at the congress, as Thuringia’s minister Steffen Schütz runs for federal vice chair citing a need to showcase governing results.
- Following the Bundestag setback, defections include Saxony lead candidate Marcel Machill, three Brandenburg state MPs and members of the Saxony-Anhalt board, while the timing of a planned recount complaint to the Constitutional Court remains unclear.