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The Left Party.PDS (In German: Die Linkspartei.PDS), formerly Party of Democratic Socialism (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, PDS) is a socialist political party in Germany. It is the legal successor to the Socialist Unity Party (SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) until 1990. Between 1990 and 2005 the PDS had been seen as the leftwing "party of the East", and whilst achieving minimal support in western Germany regularly won 15 to 25 percent of the vote in eastern Germany, entering coalition governments (with the SPD) in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin. In 2005 the PDS, renamed the Left Party, entered an electoral alliance with the western Germany-based Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG) and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections (more than double the PDS' 4% share in the 2002 election).