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Campaigns

Mamdani’s Next Battleground? Berlin.

Staffers from Germany’s Die Linke party traveled to New York last year to learn from the DSA’s campaign as they try to win a mayor’s race in Berlin.

Zohran Mamdani

“We embrace Mamdani’s victory,” said Janis Ehling, the Die Linke federal managing director, which is the equivalent of an executive director for a party in the U.S. “We learned a lot [from] them, especially when it comes to community organizing, door knocking, canvassing campaigns.” (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

By Daniella Diaz

September 1, 2026 05:02 a.m.

BERLIN — A mayor’s race. A Muslim candidate from the left. A promise to make one of the world’s great cities affordable again.

Sound familiar? This time it’s not New York. It’s Berlin, where Elif Eralp, Die Linke’s candidate, is running to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, as well as the first Left Party mayor since the city’s reunification. Recent polling shows her leading with 20.7% of the vote against the Christian Democratic Union of Germany Party and the Alternative for Germany party, which are polling around 18.9% and 17.6%, respectively.

The Sept. 20 election echoes the race that gripped America last year, when political newcomer Zohran Mamdani toppled former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and rewrote the rules of what a mayoral campaign could look like.