- The CDU clearly won the repeat elections to the House of Representatives in Berlin and replaced the SPD as the strongest force.
- The CDU claimed the government contract. However, it is still unclear who will rule the German capital in the future.
- The previous coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Left still has a majority of the seats in the Berlin state parliament, despite a significant loss of votes.
In the German capital, with its 3.8 million inhabitants a federal state in its own right, the SPD has been the governing mayor since 2001. Now the Christian Democrats have become the strongest force for the first time in two decades.
The CDU has 48 seats, the Greens and the SPD each have 31 seats. The left gets 21 seats, the AfD 16.
Around 2.4 million people were entitled to vote in the House of Representatives. After counting all voting districts, turnout was 63.1 percent. In 2021 it was 75.4 percent, but the Bundestag was also elected that year.
Our mission is to form a stable government.
CDU top candidate Kai Wegner spoke of a “phenomenal” success and said: “Our job is to form a stable government.” Berlin chose the change.
He announced that he would invite the SPD and the Greens to explore. The CDU federal chairman Friedrich Merz wrote on Twitter: “The clear government mandate for the CDU is the first step towards our goal of making the federal capital work better.”
The result is a setback for the SPD because Franziska Giffey (SPD) could lose her position as head of government in Berlin. She recognized the CDU victory. The voters wished “that things would be different”.
Your goal remains to remain in government. “If we have an opportunity to lead a government alliance under SPD leadership, then we will also try to organize a stable political majority for it.”
Greens want to continue coalition
The Greens’ top candidate Bettina Jarasch spoke out in favor of continuing the coalition with the SPD and the left. “The current government coalition has a clear and stable majority,” she said on ARD. A new edition of red-green-red would be a challenge to Wegner, who has now led the CDU forward again.
Giffey hardly scored in the election campaign with her office bonus. The 44-year-old SPD state leader, who was born in the GDR and grew up in Brandenburg, was mayor in the Neukölln district and rose to become Federal Minister for Family Affairs in 2018. Giffey resigned from the cabinet in May 2021 because of a plagiarism scandal surrounding her doctoral thesis.
Should the Greens become the second strongest force, the 54-year-old senator for the environment, Jarasch, has the option of becoming the first Greens head of government in Berlin and replacing Giffey. Born in Augsburg, she stands for a traffic turnaround away from combustion cars and halving the number of parking spaces – which reduces the political intersection with the CDU.
Indicator for further elections
The success of the Berlin CDU should give the federal party and its chairman Friedrich Merz a boost, because this year there are three state elections in Bremen, Hesse and Bavaria. The federal FDP has to cope with being thrown out of a state parliament again after a series of sensitive election defeats.
The election was a repeat because that of September 2021 had been declared invalid due to “serious systemic deficiencies”.