Berlin election 2024: The most important answers to the repeat election

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Long queues for the 2021 federal election in Berlin: repeat after 868 days

Photo: Hauke-Christian Dittrich/dpa

Berlin chooses. Yet again. On Sunday, a good half a million people in the capital are called upon to repeat the federal election in 455 electoral districts. The September 2021 election was exactly 868 days ago, and another election is expected to take place in less than 600 days in autumn 2025.

Why is the Berlin repeat election necessary? Who can vote? And what can the vote change? The most important answers to the Berlin election 2.0 – and what that can mean for the traffic lights.

Why does the election have to be repeated?

The 2021 election was accompanied by many mishaps. Ballot papers were missing from several polling stations, and ballot papers from different districts were mixed up elsewhere. Some polling stations were still open after 6 p.m., when the first forecasts and projections had already been published. A few days after the breakdowns became known, the state returning officer resigned, and a good year later, in November 2022, the Bundestag decided to have the vote repeated.

New elections should initially take place in 431 of the 2,257 electoral districts. However, the Union considered the number 431 to be too low, and the Bundestag faction filed an election audit complaint. In December 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court finally ruled that new elections must be held in 455 districts.

Wasn't there already a second choice?

Yes, but for the House of Representatives. In September 2021, Berliners voted not only in the Bundestag but also at the state level - and there were glitches there too. They were so massive that the Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin declared the elections to the House of Representatives and the district council assemblies invalid in November 2022 and ordered a complete repeat. On February 12, 2023, the repeat election for the town hall and the districts took place - but not yet for the Bundestag.

There was a change of government in the repeat election for the House of Representatives: Kai Wegner (CDU) replaced Franziska Giffey (SPD) at the head of the state government, and instead of red-red-green, black-red now governs.

Can the repeat election change the balance of power in the Bundestag?

The short answer: no.

The more detailed answer: Calculated at the federal level, only 0.91 percent of the votes in the 2021 federal election are invalid; new elections will only take place in parts of Berlin. The election cannot therefore change the traffic light's government majority. At most, individual seats may change: new direct mandates may be won. Someone can also be ousted from the Bundestag via the state list. The Berlin “Tagesspiegel” has provided extensive data analysis here on how mandates could change in which scenarios.

Can the election have an impact on the Left and Sahra Wagenknecht's group?

No. The Left's direct mandates are not in danger. The Left benefited from the so-called basic mandate clause in 2021 with a result of 4.9 percent. It stipulates that a party can enter the Bundestag with a vote share of less than five percent if it has won at least three direct mandates. The Left managed to do that; Gesine Lötzsch and Gregor Gysi won two of the direct mandates in Berlin.

If one of these were to be eliminated in the repeat election, the Left would theoretically no longer be represented in the Bundestag - even if it has now split into two groups after the departure of Sahra Wagenknecht and Getreuen. In practice, the partial repetition cannot fundamentally change the result in the two constituencies of Lötzsch and Gysi.

How did Berlin vote in 2021?

The Berlin vote shares of the parties in the 2021 federal election differed significantly from the nationwide result. The Greens and the Left performed above average in the capital, the other parties worse.

In the electoral districts affected by the repeat election, the differences are even greater: the Greens had almost twice as high a share of the vote here in 2021 as they did nationwide. The CDU and AfD achieved weak results.

Where will the election be repeated?

Around a fifth of the electoral districts in all twelve Berlin federal constituencies are affected by the repeat election. Specifically, this concerns 455 of the 2,257 ballot box voting districts and the associated 294 postal voting districts.

Who gets to vote again?

Across Berlin, around 550,000 people are eligible to vote in the repeat election, around a fifth of the 2.47 million eligible voters called in the original 2021 election. Voter turnout at that time was 75.2 percent. Interest is now likely to be lower, but the state election management is hoping for a similarly high turnout as in the repeat state election a year ago: around 60 percent.

Is it fair that so many Berliners are allowed to vote “double”?

According to party lawyer Sophie Schönberger, the election creates “injustices in individual cases” but cannot be legally avoided overall. The accusation that those who are allowed to vote again already know the result can easily be refuted: over two years have passed since the federal election. The election results from back then hardly reflect the current mood.

The electorate has also changed since then: For example, all Germans of legal age who live in an eligible Berlin electoral district are now allowed to vote, even if they were not yet 18 years old in 2021. Anyone who has moved from another city in the meantime also has the right to vote in the relevant electoral districts. However, anyone who has moved from Berlin cannot take part in the repeat election.

Will the results be known on election night?

Unlike usual, this time there are no central parties' events on election evening waiting for the forecasts on television. You rely on the data from the state election authority, which publishes the current count status. By the time the preliminary results are announced, it will probably be well after midnight.

Who is up for election? Which personal details will be exciting?

Basically, the same people are on the ballot papers as in 2021. The parties are not allowed to put forward any new candidates in a repeat election. In the case of the AfD, this means that suspended judge and former member of the Bundestag Birgit Malsack-Winkemann is running as a candidate, even though she is now in custody on suspicion of terrorism as a suspected part of a "Reichsbürger" group.

There could be a change in mandate, especially in the constituencies of Pankow and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, which were particularly hard hit by the mishaps. Stefan Gelbhaar (Greens) in Pankow and the former Berlin Governing Mayor Michael Müller (SPD) in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf both narrowly received a relative majority of the first votes in 2021. Müller is running against Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (read more about Paus' election campaign here). However, both are likely to remain in the Bundestag with secure places on the state list regardless of the first votes.

However, anyone who moved in at the bottom of the state list has to worry. If voter turnout was low, the place in parliament would possibly go to another federal state.

Does the election have significance beyond Berlin?

During the election campaign, the opposition put a lot of effort into declaring the repeat election a mood test for the traffic lights. The CDU advertises with a gigantic poster on the facade of the party headquarters: “Berlin, your chance”.

Although the capital traditionally votes more left-wing and greener than the rest of the Federal Republic, Berlin has recently become significantly more conservative in the election of representatives. It remains to be seen whether the partial election confirms the current federal trend - and punishes the traffic light parties in favor of the CDU and AfD.

Even if the election may not change anything or hardly anything about the composition of parliament, the repeat election could definitely have an impact on the mood in the Bundestag.