After redialing
Bundestag one seat smaller – FDP mandate gone
The partial repeat election in Berlin marked the start of an important election year in Germany. photo
© Joerg Carstensen/dpa
After many mishaps in 2021, the federal election in Berlin will be partially repeated. Although the result has only limited significance, it also has implications for other federal states.
The partial repeat of the federal election in Berlin has led to a reduction in the size of parliament by one seat at the expense of the FDP. Dem In the future, there will still be 735 members of the Bundestag, including only 91 from the FDP, as the Federal Returning Officer announced on Monday night. For the other parties, the bottom line is that the number of seats remains unchanged.
This does not change the majority in parliament. Despite the small number of voters for a federal election, the percentage changes are an indication: things went up for the opposition parties CDU and AfD in Berlin, down for the traffic light parties SPD and FDP – and the Greens were able to almost maintain their Berlin result.
According to the result in the capital, the SPD remains the strongest party there with 22.2 percent (-1.2 percentage points), closely followed by the Greens with 22.0 percent (-0.3). The CDU improved to 17.2 percent (+1.3). The AfD climbed to 9.4 percent (+1.0) and pushed past the FDP, which fell to 8.1 percent (-0.9). With 11.5 percent, the Left practically maintained its result from the 2021 election (+0.1).
The overall nationwide percentage result for 2021 only changed minimally: the FDP (11.4 percent) and the Greens (14.7 percent) each lost 0.1 percentage points. The CDU (19.0 percent) and AfD (10.4 percent) each received 0.1 percentage points more. For the SPD (25.7 percent) and the Left (4.9 percent), the federal result from 2021 did not change in the election on Sunday.
Voter turnout lower than 2021
In addition to the vote result, the level of voter turnout is also crucial for the distribution of seats among the state associations of the parties. Due to the low turnout of 69.5 percent, the state of Berlin lost 4 mandates and will only be represented in the Bundestag by 25 politicians in the future. The SPD politician Angela Hohmann from Lower Saxony, Franziska Krumwiede-Steiner from the Greens from North Rhine-Westphalia and Christine Buchholz from the Left in Hesse also moved into the Bundestag.
The re-election was caused by many organizational problems and mishaps during the 2021 vote in Berlin. According to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, new elections had to be held in 455 of the 2,256 electoral districts. Almost 550,000 Berliners were called upon to take part. The election management stated the turnout for the entire Berlin federal election – i.e. in the electoral districts with still valid results and in those with a repeat election – at 69.5 percent (2021: 75.2 percent). This was the lowest value for a federal election in the state of Berlin since 1990.
Start of an important election year
The election marked the start of an important election year in Germany: the European elections are scheduled for June 9th, followed by state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg in September. It was already clear that this would not change the majority in the Bundestag or the majority of the traffic light coalition – the proportion of those entitled to repeat voting out of all eligible voters nationwide is only 0.9 percent. However, smaller shifts were expected.
There were no changes in the 12 Bundestag direct mandates that are up for grabs in the capital: SPD 4, Greens and CDU 3 each and Left 2. Former Prime Minister Michael Müller (SPD) defended his direct mandate particularly narrowly. SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, former Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters (CDU) and Green Party politician Stefan Gelbhaar also achieved this in particularly exciting constituencies.
“From an organizational point of view, the election went well,” said state returning officer Stephan Bröchler in the RBB. However, there were some “mistakes” that are common for an election of this magnitude. In a polling station in Pankow, for example, a key was missing for a room with the voting documents, which were then delivered by the district.
Election day 2021 was chaotic
On September 26, 2021, in addition to the election for the Bundestag, the elections for the Berlin House of Representatives, the district council assemblies and a referendum took place in the capital. A lot went wrong back then: long lines in front of polling stations, missing or incorrect ballot papers, and a temporary interruption in voting in some places. Some voters cast their votes after 6 p.m., when forecasts and projections had already been published.
For this reason, the two botched elections at the state and district level were completely repeated on February 12, 2023 by order of the Berlin Constitutional Court. The Karlsruhe judges, in turn, only declared the federal election partially invalid.