A person votes in Berlin this Sunday. FABRIZIO BENSCH (REUTERS)
The Christian Democrats of the CDU have obtained first place, with a wide advantage, in the elections to the Berlin regional Parliament held this Sunday, according to the projections published at 8:09 p.m.
The conservative candidate, Kai Wegner, has achieved 28% of the vote, according to ZDF public television, 10 points more than the Social Democrats of the SPD, who have remained at 18.2%.
The CDU victory does not immediately translate into change for Berlin after 22 years of Social Democratic rule.
The current mayor, Franziska Giffey, could still remake the left-wing coalition.
The Berliners returned to the polls this Sunday in the repetition of the 2021 regional and municipal elections, annulled by a series of irregularities on the day of the vote.
Around 2.5 million people were called to re-elect the deputies of the city-State Parliament, in an appointment that could complicate things for Chancellor Olaf Scholz if the Social Democratic candidate fails to re-form a government.
The Greens, until now part of the coalition that governed the German capital together with the left of Die Linke, have been tied with the Social Democrats.
It is the first time in more than two decades that the SPD is not the most voted force in Berlin.
If the Greens end up outvoting the SPD, they would likely demand that their candidate, Bettina Jarasch, become mayor, leaving the Social Democrats as junior partner.
The numbers also allow for an alliance between the CDU and the SPD.
An agreement between the CDU and the Greens is also possible, but unlikely due to the enormous ideological differences between the two formations.
"People want a political change", stressed the Christian Democrat Wegner after knowing the first polls.
The Social Democrat Giffey has congratulated, for her part, the “clear winner” and has acknowledged that the Berliners “are not satisfied”.
The elections were repeated after the decision of the Constitutional Court to annul the elections held on September 26, 2021 due to the organizational chaos that took place in the polling stations in the German capital.
Many opened late, long queues formed, tables ran out of tickets and some even closed for a few hours.
The elections to the Berlin Senate coincided with those of the 12 districts into which the city is divided, with federal elections and with a referendum on the need to expropriate large homeowners.
In addition, that day the famous Berlin marathon was held, which collapsed the city.
Vans carrying ballots to schools where they had been completed got stuck in traffic jams.
The list of irregularities is so long that the Constitutional Court made a decision hitherto unprecedented in Germany: to repeat the elections with the same candidates and without starting a new legislature.
The committee that examined the errors of that day of chaos listed, for example, that more than 250 schools remained open until after 6:30 p.m. – the day ends at 6:00 p.m. – and that one even closed at 9:31 p.m.
Some schools were closed for up to two hours, a minor voted illegally and ballots were delivered to the wrong districts.
Queues at a polling station in the Berlin district of Moabit during the elections on September 26, 2021. Michael Probst (AP)
These were, therefore, anomalous elections, almost a year and a half after the first vote, and in which a vote of punishment for Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD) was expected.
The party, which has ruled Berlin for 22 years without interruption, is responsible for the organizational disaster of the last elections, along with its partners, the Greens and the left of Die Linke.
The electoral appointment in Berlin was also a propitious moment for the vote to punish the federal coalition.
Since September 2021, the perception has spread that the German capital is little more than a black hole of misrule in which nothing works anymore, although many of the problems - schools that are falling apart and lacking teachers, cuts in subway lines or dirt on the streets—they have dragged on for years.
The inauguration of the Berlin airport is still very recent, which took almost 10 years longer than expected and with an additional cost of 4,000 million euros.
The future of the FDP liberals is up in the air: as the count progresses, the formation has dropped from the initial 5% to 4.7%, that is, below the minimum threshold to enter Parliament.
The far-right of the AfD has obtained 9.3% of the votes, more than in 2021 (8%), but far from their results in 2016, when they obtained 15.6%.
Losing Berlin would be a shock to the coalition led by Scholz in the federal government, with Greens and Liberals.
Because of the emotional blow —the capital has been on the left for more than two decades—, but also because the voting would be complicated for it in the Bundesrat, the upper house of the German Parliament, where the 16 länder
(Federal States)
are represented: it would lose a few seats
very necessary for the pending legislative reforms.
Election poster of the current mayor of Berlin, the social democrat Franziska Giffey.
PHILIP SINGER (EFE)
For Friedrich Merz's CDU, the new elections represent a golden opportunity to seize the capital from the SPD and face the October elections with a tailwind in the land of Hesse, one of the richest in the country and where the financial capital is
located
. from Germany, Frankfurt.
Wegner's intention to vote, who in the campaign has hammered the image of chaotic Berlin with no one behind the wheel, has skyrocketed in the last month and a half.
The campaign has once again put on the table the great problems of Berlin, a city of 3.8 million inhabitants that does not stop attracting new neighbors to work in its thriving technological sector and that has welcomed tens of thousands of refugees after the crisis of 2015 and 2016 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It is estimated that at least 125,000 homes are missing, rents are scarce and affordable prices are a thing of the past.
The city is having a hard time keeping up with the needs of its growing population.
That is why there has been talk about housing, but also about overcrowded public schools, mobility problems and the difficulty of getting an appointment at the municipal offices, which cannot cope.
Berlin was gambling so much its prestige in these elections that it even invited OSCE observers to monitor the elections.
The organization did not consider it necessary and wrote in its report that it has "a high degree of confidence in the ability" of the city-state authorities to carry out the elections.
The fact that this time they have not coincided with other votes or with the marathon has made things easier.
There have been no queues or other types of incidents.
“We have printed more than 11 million ballots,” said the new one this week — the person in charge of the 2021 ballots resigned — head of the electoral machinery, Stephan Bröchler.
They have also installed more voting booths and hired more staff, from 34,000 to 42,000.
The city couldn't afford another botch job.
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