BERLIN, July 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The newly-formed Left Party, composed of dissatisfied Social democrats and former East German communists, rallied in Berlin on Sunday with polls showing their voter support has overtaken the Greens.

    Delegates at an extraordinary Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) congress supported the measure to join a splinter far-left party by 74.6 percent, easily reaching the two-thirds majority requirement.

    With the move, the PDS will now be known, together with former Social Democrat chairman Oskar Lafontaine's Election Alternative for Social Justice (WASG) party, as "Die Linkspartei," or "The Left Party."

    With only two months to go before the general election, opinion polls showed that The Left Party netting 10 percent of the vote, compared to 7 percent for the Greens, junior partners in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's coalition government.

    The result would make the new party the third strongest political force in Germany after Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats with a support rate of 43 percent and Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) at 27 percent.

    According to an Emnid Institute poll, The Left Party has a 23 percent support in the five states made up by the former Republic of Democratic Germany, while in the west it got nearly 10 percent of support, almost equaling with the Greens in most places.

    The PDS were the successors to Erich Honecker's SED party thatruled former Republic of Democratic Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. After reunification, it has remained a political force in Germany's five eastern states.

    By merging with Lafontaine's leftist splinter party, the PDS hope to turn The Left Party into a socialist force to be reckoned with should early elections go ahead in September, as widely anticipated. Pollsters have already forecast that the alliance could win 12 percent of the vote.

    "This is an extremely important chance for us," leader of the PDS Gregor Gysi said. Enditem