BREMEN, Germany, May 14 (UPI) -- A German far-left party has won its first seat in a western German state parliament.
The Left Party, the successor to the ruling party in former communist East Germany, got 8.4 percent of the ballot in the northern German city state of Bremen, compared to 1.7 percent in the state's last elections in 2003.
The parties that rule on a federal level, Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats, or SPD, both lost support in the state.
Analysts said Sunday night in a TV interview that the SPD had to learn from this setback and start wooing voters left of the middle.
Left Party officials were excited.
Far-left poster boy Oskar Lafontaine said the German political landscape will change forever, while his colleague Bodo Ramelow claimed that the Left Party should now show that even on a federal level, "solidarity and social security have a home, and that home is with us."
The Left Party is made up of the remnants of the former ruling party in East Germany, the SED, and the western German group of dissidents who left the SPD.
Mainstream party officials have accused the Left Party of wooing voters with populist, unrealistic promises.
