Franziska Giffey: SPD wins election to the House of Representatives in Berlin

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Franziska Giffey at the election party of the Berlin SPD in Kreuzberg

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Bernd Von Jutrczenka / dpa

The SPD won the parliamentary elections in Berlin.

The party with top candidate Franziska Giffey reached 21.4 percent on Sunday after counting all voting districts.

In second place are the Greens, who achieved their best result in a Berlin election with 18.9 percent.

The CDU received 18.1 percent of the vote, according to the state election control, the Left received 14.0 percent, the AfD 8.0 percent and the FDP 7.1 percent.

On Sunday evening it initially seemed as if the Greens could also win the election with their top candidate Bettina Jarasch.

In the course of the evening, however, the SPD pushed forward in the projections.

As before, both parties could continue to form a coalition with one another and with the left.

It is therefore certain that Berlin will have a governing mayor for the first time in its history.

Giffey: "Clear vote for the SPD and the Greens"

"We have a head-to-head race between the SPD and the Greens, which means that there is a clear vote for the SPD and the Greens, we have to deal with that," said Giffey on Sunday evening on the Phoenix broadcaster.

In the event of an election victory, they will also speak to all other parties, but the will of the electorate is clear.

Green top candidate Jarasch told the same broadcaster that she wanted to stick to a "progressive government alliance" with the SPD and the left.

"We started a lot of things in this red-red-green coalition that people think are good," said Jarasch.

"That's why I said from the start that I would like to continue this progressive coalition, but under green leadership."

Other tripartite alliances were also conceivable.

CDU top candidate Kai Wegner said on Sunday evening that his party had started to end red-red-green, the numbers might still give it away.

However, the CDU again achieved one of the worst results of the post-war period.

FDP top candidate Sebastian Czaja confirmed his willingness to speak to all parties except for the left and AfD.

Chaos around voting

In addition to the House of Representatives, Berliners were able to elect the new Bundestag and twelve new district parliaments on Sunday.

Top topics in the election campaign were rents and housing, transport, climate protection, education and Corona.

A referendum was also about whether large housing groups should be expropriated.

In the first results, a majority was in favor of expropriation.

Sometimes there was chaos at the polling stations in Berlin.

Missing and swapped ballot papers as well as problems with subsequent deliveries meant that some voters had to wait a long time and were only able to cast their votes well after 6 p.m.

They counted until the early hours of the morning.

In 2016, the SPD won the election to the House of Representatives with 21.6 percent of the second vote - its worst result in Berlin since 1946. The CDU then achieved 17.6 percent.

The left came to 15.6 percent five years ago, the Greens to 15.2 percent.

The AfD moved into the House of Representatives for the first time with 14.2 percent, the FDP managed 6.7 percent.

The Berlin state parliament consists of at least 130 members, currently there are 160 due to overhang and equalization mandates.

irb / dpa