There’s no sense putting lipstick on a pig: the German federal election, in which the socialist party Die Linke won only 4.9 percent of the vote, was an unmitigated disaster for the Left.

In the September 26 vote, the party’s support was nearly halved, compared to the last such contest in 2017. Even worse, it registered its biggest losses in its traditional Eastern strongholds, where it suffered its weakest ever result; an average of 10.1 percent across all five eastern states. Fifteen years after the East German Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) fused with ex–finance minister Oskar Lafontaine’s split from the Social Democrats (SPD) to form a unified socialist force, Die Linke’s future as a viable party and leading force in the European left is hanging by a thread.

Signs that Die Linke was in for a stinging defeat had been multiplying for several years. In 2019, it scored just 5.5 percent support in elections to the European Parliament — down from 7.4 percent in 2014 — and it has suffered major losses in practically every regional election since. Nevertheless, with polls placing the party on 6 or 7 percent, few expected such a life-threatening blow as the Sunday before the last turned out to be. In the days since the result, party leaders have struggled to offer a plausible explanation for the defeat — underlining the depth of Die Linke’s crisis and the absence of a clear pathway out of it.