As of: February 11, 2024, 4:28 p.m
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The election in Berlin will not change the majority in the Bundestag.
However, small shifts are possible.
© Christoph Soeder/dpa
After the mishaps in 2021, some Berliners are voting again.
This time it's about the Bundestag - and there are some special features.
What will the voter turnout be?
And: Does something go wrong again?
Berlin - Apart from minor delays, the partial repeat of the federal election in Berlin has so far gone smoothly from the perspective of the state election management.
If you just look at the turnout based on those currently eligible to vote, the figure for 12 p.m. was 18.3 percent, as the state election authorities announced on Sunday.
For the 2021 main election, it was 26.8 percent for the repeat election area at the same time.
The official total participation figure is made up of the number of voters in the approximately 1,800 valid electoral district results from 2021 and those in the electoral districts in which voting will take place again.
As of 12 p.m. on Sunday, this number was 25.4 percent.
That is 2 percentage points less than in the 2021 main election.
In September 2021, in addition to the election to the Bundestag, there were also elections to the House of Representatives, the district council assemblies and a referendum.
The elections at the state and district level had already been completely repeated in February 2023.
Today, voting takes place in 455 of 2,256 electoral districts and the associated postal voting districts, i.e. around a fifth.
The election in the capital will not change the majority in the Bundestag.
The proportion of those eligible to vote in Berlin on Sunday compared to the total number at the federal level is only 0.9 percent.
However, small shifts are possible.
Some MPs could lose their seats in the Bundestag, others could move into parliament.
On September 26, 2021, Berlin botched the elections in an unprecedented way.
Long queues in front of polling stations, missing or incorrect ballot papers, a temporary interruption in voting in some places - the list of problems was long, and a lot has been changed since then.
A key was missing
According to state returning officer Stephan Bröchler, important precautions have been taken to ensure that everything runs smoothly.
“The mistake must be cured and only we, the citizens, can do that,” said Bröchler that morning while casting his vote.
In two cases there were delays in the voting process.
In a polling station in the Pankow district, a key for a locked room with the voting documents was missing, as Bröchler described.
The electoral board did not receive the key from the daycare center there.
Documents were then delivered by the district, so that the restaurant opened at 8:40 a.m. with a 40-minute delay.
The RBB had previously reported on this case.
In Kreuzberg, according to Bröchler, an electoral board was delayed due to an accident with a taxi, so that the polling station in question also started late.
“This can happen with the best organization,” said the state returning officer.
At a polling station in Pankow, a board member was replaced by his deputy because he was possibly drunk.
There were no delays there.
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Even if these “low-threshold” cases are annoying for Bröchler, there were no major incidents on Sunday until the early afternoon.
Everything is in the “green area”.
Features of the choice
The parties were not allowed to put forward any new candidates; the ballot paper had to look like it did in 2021. This led, for example, to the former AfD member of the Bundestag Birgit Malsack-Winkemann formally running again, who had not made it into the Bundestag in 2021.
She was arrested in a large-scale raid in December 2022 and is in custody.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office accuses her of membership and support of a (right-wing) terrorist organization.
SPD candidate Michael Müller is on the ballot with the job title Governing Mayor.
He was still that in 2021, but today he no longer holds the office.
Merkel has already voted
Voting takes place in all twelve Berlin federal parliamentary constituencies, but to very different degrees.
In Pankow, 85 percent of the polling districts are affected, in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf 42 percent.
In contrast, it is only 2.9 percent in Lichtenberg, 3.4 percent in Treptow-Köpenick and 6 percent in Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
It is therefore clear that in some constituencies there cannot be any mathematical changes.
Given this starting point, some fear that voter turnout will be low.
In the 2021 federal election in Berlin as a whole, it was 75.2 percent.
A voter throws the ballot paper into the urn at a polling station in Berlin-Pankow.
© Christoph Soeder/dpa
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) is also among the affected voters - according to her office, she decided to vote by post.
Among the Berlin senators, Social Senator Cansel Kiziltepe was the only one called to vote.
“It is important that we vote,” emphasized the SPD politician during the ballot in Alt-Stralau.
A big election year for Germany began in Berlin: the European elections are scheduled for June 9th, and there are three state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg in September.
dpa