The German Left party Die Linke’s recent electoral gains in Berlin have renewed attention to the organising methods behind its campaigns. They also recall Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York last year, where a mass volunteer campaign attracted international attention. In these two interviews, Nam Duy Nguyen and Arielle Swernoff reflect on the organising work behind campaigns in Germany and the US, and on the role technology can play in supporting it.

Door-knocking has become an increasingly visible part of Die Linke’s electoral campaigns. This approach did not emerge overnight. Back in 2024, Die Linke was fighting to remain in the regional parliament of Saxony, and Leipzig became an important testing ground. Hundreds of volunteers knocked on tens of thousands of doors as the party focused on winning direct mandates in the city. One of those campaigns was built around political newcomer Nam Duy Nguyen, who went on to win his Leipzig constituency.

“The real work is only just beginning!”

We spoke to Nam Duy several months ago. His account offers insight into the practices that helped underpin the party’s winning 25.7 per cent of the vote in Berlin and three direct mandates in Saxony-Anhalt, and into the role technology can play in building political power.

Nam, thanks so much for taking the time. Please introduce yourself and tell us: how did you get involved in organising?

I’m Nam Duy Nguyen from Leipzig. My approach to organising grew out of two things. One was my experience with workplace organising in Germany’s trade union renewal movement, where organising has shown real success in building collective power and a more democratic, conflict-oriented trade union movement.

The other was the question of how to translate that into political organising. We wanted to build a unifying project against the far right, and that became the basis for our 2024 state election campaign.

As a political newcomer, you set out to win a direct mandate for the Saxon state parliament, mobilising hundreds of volunteers for different forms of canvassing. How did you approach the campaign?

The goal was to organise people for the long term. We systematically mapped and engaged the constituency, district by district, holding structured conversations about people’s concerns and making those issues the basis of the campaign.

At different stages, we then mobilised people to vote or take part in events such as neighbourhood assemblies and summer festivals. We tried to make organising part of that work from the beginning. The campaign was successful – we won 40 percent of the vote and I was elected – but the real work is only just beginning.

You mentioned mapping the constituency and having structured conversations with people. How did you decide where to focus and what to prioritise? What role did data play in that?

Data played an important role in deciding where to focus. We used demographic data from the city – past voting behaviour, population figures, the number of mailboxes and the number of non-voters – to identify priority areas.

For mapping the constituency and coordinating canvassing, we mainly used Zetkin. Over time, we built up clear figures: how many knocks led to an open door, how many conversations followed, and how many of those resulted in a pledge to vote. That allowed us to set realistic targets. In organising, targets matter because they give you milestones and show activists what level of effort is needed to reach the goal. And the Zetkin app was absolutely crucial for that.

We also used spreadsheets to assign responsibilities and kept regular feedback loops with the neighbourhood organisers running the canvassing operation. They reviewed the numbers, discussed what was working and adjusted the campaign accordingly. That part happened outside the app.

So the data and tools helped structure the campaign, but much of the organising happened outside the app. How should a left organisation think about the role of technology?

I think political organisations – especially Die Linke – need to use technology in a very targeted way. Resources are usually limited, so you need a clear plan to win: what are you trying to achieve, who are you trying to reach, and what kind of organising will get you there?

Technology can help you test things, evaluate them and make the campaign more focused. But the larger task is organisational. As Jane McAlevey argued, Die Linke would already take a big step forward by moving away from self-selected activism towards structure-based organising – systematically mapping and engaging the structures you want to organise.

You’ve stressed that technology should serve a clear organising strategy rather than drive it. If you could design a tool around that principle, what would it need to do?

From an organiser’s perspective, it should provide a clear structural map, based on things like neighbourhoods or demographic data. Then there’s the question to what extent you can enrich that structural framework with data generated by your own work. For example, if I have a basic “turf” – as we say in organising – of, say, 4,000 people across a few streets, does it make sense to keep feeding that turf with more data from door-knocking or conversations, or rather other forms of outreach?

It should also give activists a precise record of contacts and commitments: whether someone was reached, whether there was a good conversation, whether they pledged to vote or said they would come to an event. Zetkin could do some of this, but not all of it.

It could also help make collective activity more visible.

During our action week, for example, when organisers from all over Germany came to Leipzig to support our campaign, we used the number of good conversations as a motivator between teams. And after an action, being able to get a clear, helpful rundown as soon as possible – something that really reflects the work that’s been done, is very important.

I do think that seeing each other’s work and output can be a real source of motivation.

We’ve talked a lot about methods and tools. But what makes this kind of organising politically different from simply running a more efficient campaign?

At the end of the day, door-to-door work or structure-based organising could theoretically be done by any party. For us, the point was to do politics differently. Door-knocking was a response to the fact that many people feel unheard and frustrated, and that trust in politics has eroded.

The socialist aspect of canvassing, for us, was about radically involving people in political decisions again. Otherwise, organising is just a method – a means to electoral ends – and that is too limited. There has to be an honest connection between what you hear at the doors and what you actually do politically, combined with a political programme that challenges the status quo.

So yes, these methods can be used elsewhere. But to be truly successful, organising has to be connected to political substance. The bridge between the two has to be clear.

“We don’t have the money, but we have the people!”

Nearly a year after Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York, his campaign has become a reference point for left parties elsewhere. Members of Die Linke travelled to New York to learn from the campaign, and Mamdani strategist Morris Katz later advised the party in Berlin. Elsewhere, such as in Sweden recently, Vänsterpartiet also made door-knocking and direct voter contact a central part of its 2026 campaign.

Much of the attention around Mamdani has focused on his political messaging, social media and emphasis on issues such as rents, transport and the cost of living. When we spoke to Arielle Swernoff of New York City DSA in late 2025, she gave us an insight into the organising infrastructure behind the campaign: tens of thousands of volunteers, layers of leadership and training, and technology designed to support relationships rather than replace them. As similar organising methods gain ground elsewhere, her account helps explain how that operation worked.

Arielle, thanks for taking the time. Please briefly introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role in Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.

I’m Arielle Swernoff, Campaigns Coordinator for New York City Democratic Socialists of America. I’ve been a member of NYC-DSA since 2019 and have been involved in our local and state electoral work for the past five years.

Many on the global left have been looking to New York for lessons from the campaign. What do you think made it successful?

The biggest difference was the phenomenal field programme. One in every 400 New Yorkers volunteered for this campaign. As socialists, we will never have the kind of money our opponents have. But what we do have is people.

The Mamdani campaign leveraged that people power. And that was combined with a very clear socialist message: freeze the rent, fast and free buses, universal childcare.

Organising at that scale also requires a lot of coordination. What role did technology play in making that possible?

Technology is a tool. It should serve the organising and not the other way around. We use it to support things like door-knocking and relational organising.

What we need are tools that help us connect people to the organisation, follow up with them, and support organisers in doing that work while also keeping people’s personal data secure. It would also be useful to have technology that is not owned by private equity corporations and is built around the needs of organising.

Technology can help coordinate people, but nearly 100,000 volunteers still requires a huge organisational structure. How did you build and sustain that?

DSA has a complex organisational structure, but the fundamental thing is that we have a lot of leaders and a lot of internal democracy. With the Mamdani campaign and with most of our electoral campaigns for the field programme, there’s a four-tier structure of involvement. So at the base are canvassers: people who sign up for a shift. They knock on doors. They have a nice time. Hopefully they come back.

The next level is field leads, a really critical mid-level leadership role. The field leads go to a half-day training, and then they lead a canvass usually every week, often at the same place. Before the canvass, they remind all the volunteers to show up. They welcome people, train them, pair people up, assign turfs and run debriefs – and usually a social – after the canvass. That role is crucial as it’s what allows us to scale.

Above them were coordinators supporting the field leads, and then staff. In a normal state or local race, we might have a few dozen field leads and a handful of coordinators. In the Mamdani campaign, we had many hundreds of field leads and three coordinators in every neighbourhood, basically.

A lot of people are now asking whether this kind of success can be replicated elsewhere. What do you think is actually transferable?

I think the organising structure is replicable almost anywhere. Zohran is an incredibly talented political communicator and campaigner, but the campaign also depended on having lots of leaders, lots of volunteers, a strong socialist message and a culture of canvassing and leadership development.

People need to be able to deepen their involvement, build skills and take on more responsibility. As a mostly volunteer organisation, we own our campaigns from top to bottom, which means we develop highly skilled volunteers and highly skilled leaders who can really take on stuff that is enormously complex. And we can trust them because we have these structures of leadership development. So, I absolutely think people can build these kinds of volunteer structures that help our movement grow and that allow us to organise beyond just one election.

Interviews by Sophia Bader

Edited by Sebastian Rave and Ada Regelmann