Left or in the middle: How is the Berlin SPD positioned?

With which coalition does Franziska Giffey want to govern Berlin in the future?

The SPD is still silent on this question.

The state executive will only meet in the late afternoon to discuss how to proceed.

Tobias Schrörs

Political Editor.

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The only thing that has been set so far is that the new Governing Mayor of Berlin will be named Franziska Giffey. According to the preliminary official final result, the SPD won 21.4 percent of the vote, the Greens achieved 18.9 percent. 14 percent of voters vote for the Left Party. A red-green-red alliance would be conceivable. That would mean 92 seats in the House of Representatives, 74 are required for a majority. Greens and leftists would be ready to do so.

Now the Berlin SPD has to clarify for itself which course it is taking.

The middle course by Giffey or a left course that large parts of the Berlin SPD prefer.

The advocates of a red-green-red coalition could throw the result of the referendum carried out parallel to the election of the House of Representatives into the scales as evidence that Berlin ticks more left than the rest of the republic.

56.4 percent of Berliners voted for large, private housing groups to be socialized.

39 percent are against it.

Whether the new Senate will implement the referendum remains to be seen, however.

It is not legally binding, and Giffey had declared the project to be the red line for coalition negotiations before the election.

Worst result since 1946

The Left Party is firmly behind the referendum, which goes back to the initiative “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co”.

The Greens, on the other hand, are more hesitant.

Their top candidate Bettina Jarasch had announced that she would vote yes, but she sees the referendum as more of a leverage for negotiations with housing groups.

In any case, it is clear that the Greens want to belong to the new government.

On Monday morning Jarasch referred to the increase in votes of the Greens on the Berlin-Brandenburg radio, which improved by 3.7 percentage points.

"It is clear that Berliners want the Greens to come into government."

In the Berlin SPD there is likely to be a lot of discussion about where to go now.

Giffey is not in an easy position.

The party almost reached the election result of the previous election - the SPD only lost 0.2 percentage points, but that was the worst SPD result in Berlin since 1946. That is far from a huge victory.

So Giffey will have to be a little more considerate of the mood in the national association.

Large parts of the Berlin SPD are politically to the left of their top candidate.

During the election campaign, Giffey sought to be close to the economy, she does not want to create apartments through expropriations, but through new construction, and she also focused on the issue of internal security.

A traffic light?

Or "Germany"?

With this election result, will she be able to prevail with her middle course? Some in the party chalk at her for not speaking out in favor of a left alliance before the election and for signaling openness towards the CDU and FDP with her course. Whoever spoke to comrades on election evening heard different tones. The big question that concerns everyone is whether the middle course was the right one or not, maybe it lost votes after all.

There are alternatives to a red-green-red alliance. The largest possible majority in a three-party alliance would have a coalition of the SPD, Greens and CDU with 98 seats. The CDU top candidate Kai Wegner, whose party received 18.1 percent of the second vote, advertised on Monday morning in the rbb for a change of government. "We have alternatives to this left-wing alliance," he said. The SPD must now think carefully about whether it wants to implement what it has been calling for in the last few weeks in the election campaign: “the further construction of the A100, the development of the Tempelhofer Feld - at least on the edge -, video protection in front of schools, expansion of the subway and much more. ”With a red-red-green state government, she was not able to implement that in the past. For red-green-black, however, there would be big hurdles,There are huge differences between the programs of the CDU and the Greens, for example when it comes to internal security or transport policy.

Finally, there are two other coalition options.

A traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP would have 80 seats in the House of Representatives.

Another option would be a government without the Greens.

Giffey could forge a coalition with the CDU and FDP.

The three parties together have 78 seats in the House of Representatives.

This “Germany” coalition would go well with Giffey in terms of content, for example in the fields of domestic policy, climate policy and housing policy.

However, it is questionable whether the Berlin SPD would go along with this.