Leipzig Left Party politician Sören Pellmann has won the most votes in his constituency in the Bundestag election for the third time in a row. With 36.8 percent of the first votes, the 48-year-old came out on top against, among others, MP Paula Piechotta (Greens, 10.2 percent) and the CDU and AfD candidates Dietmar Link (16 percent) and Christoph Neumann (18.7 percent).
Pellmann had already been successful in his home city in 2017 and 2021. Whether he wins another direct mandate for his party depends on his party's second votes under the new electoral law, which is being applied for the first time, and will therefore only be decided with the provisional final result, which is still pending this evening.
In the 2021 election, Pellmann, together with the Left Party leaders Gregor Gysi and Gesine Lötzsch, ensured that the Left Party made it into the Bundestag at all. With 4.9 percent, the party remained below the five-percent threshold and was only able to enter parliament because it won three direct mandates.
