repeat election
Election campaign final sprint in Berlin: shaking hands in the drizzle
Berlin’s still governing mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) on the last day of the election campaign. photo
© Fabian Sommer/dpa
Due to numerous glitches in voting in 2021, the parliamentary elections in Berlin will be repeated on Sunday. The parties fight for votes until the end.
One day before the repeat elections in Berlin, the top candidates ended their election campaign in the drizzle. One of the topics discussed at the parties’ stands was how the tense situation on the Berlin housing market can be improved. The September 2021 parliamentary election has to be repeated due to many mishaps and problems and could change the political situation in the capital.
The governing mayor and SPD top candidate Franziska Giffey discussed, among other things, with an activist about the referendum on the expropriation of housing groups. The left candidate Klaus Lederer wrote on Twitter: “Only we put the necessary pressure for #socialization.” The election campaign also continued online. “The hours until the election are numbered,” wrote the Berlin Greens. “Even now everything is still in it.”
The SPD, the Greens and the Left have governed together since 2016, and they renewed the coalition in December 2021. Since then, the former Federal Family Minister Giffey has ruled in the Red City Hall, but she now has to fear for her office.
Campaign break to commemorate earthquake victims
In the last three polls from last Thursday, the CDU was ahead with its top candidate Kai Wegner. The SPD came in second, ahead of the Greens. Whoever forms a coalition in Berlin in the future can only do so until 2026. Since this is a repeat election and not a new election, nothing changes in the legislative period. It started in 2021 and will last five years.
Around 2.43 million people are allowed to cast their votes in the Berlin House of Representatives elections. This means that there are around 15,800 fewer eligible voters in the repeat election than in the main election in September 2021, as the state returning officer announced on Saturday. A polling card has already been issued for around 31 percent of those entitled to vote – for example for a postal vote or an early election on site.
On Saturday afternoon, the candidates from the SPD, Greens, CDU and FDP met again at a commemoration event for the victims of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria at the Brandenburg Gate. Nobody there wanted to talk about election campaigns. “Perhaps now is the time at the latest when the small details of the dispute and the many bad words that we sometimes hear on the Internet and elsewhere are simply put aside and we reflect on what is really important: the common one Solidarity is the fight for peace, for human rights, for democracy,” said the governing mayor and SPD candidate Franziska Giffey.
The Greens candidate Bettina Jarasch expressed her sympathy for those affected and promised support. “We will continue to help, there is the airlift and we will continue to help after election day as long as the help is needed.” On Friday, the Senate announced that Berlin would make it easier for victims of the earthquake who have relatives in the capital to enter Germany.