Olaf Scholz’s party loses Berlin election to CDU

The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has won elections in the German capital, Berlin, according to projections, after a rerun of a poll held in 2021 that was so chaotic its results were nullified by the city’s top court.

The result is a blow for German chancellor Olaf Scholz and his party, the left-of-centre Social Democrats (SPD), who have governed Berlin in shifting coalitions for the last 22 years. It was the party’s worst performance in the capital since the second world war, German media reported.

“The Berliners have made their views clear — they want something else,” said Franziska Giffey, the city’s SPD mayor. “We have to exercise some humility in this situation.”

The victorious CDU said the result was a vindication of their campaign message that Berlin was a dysfunctional city that needed a radical change of course. That perception had grown among many voters after New Year’s Eve celebrations in the capital degenerated into a riot, with violent attacks on police and firefighters.

But whether the Christian Democrats will be able to form a government in a city where the majority traditionally votes left is unclear. Most of the other big parties have no interest in teaming up with the party.

“You can only create a government once you’ve formed a majority in parliament and there are options there beyond the CDU,” former Berlin mayor Michael Müller told ARD TV on Sunday. “And we saw in the campaign that there’s a lot . . . separating the Greens and SPD from the CDU in terms of policy.”

“The CDU did not run a campaign of the outstretched hand — on the contrary, they slammed a lot of doors,” said Kevin Kühnert, SPD general secretary.

But leading Christian Democrat politicians insisted that they should now take power in Berlin. “The CDU gained 10 percentage points and the government got a shellacking,” said Carsten Linnemann, deputy head of the CDU’s parliamentary group. “There was a clear winner and the people now expect that this winner is given the chance to form a government.

Kai Wegner, the CDU’s leader in Berlin, said there were “two options for stable two-party coalitions” — one between the CDU and SPD, and one between the CDU and the Greens.

Although the CDU won the election, it is likely that the city will continue to be ruled by the three-way coalition consisting of the SPD, Greens and Die Linke, a hard-left party, that has governed it since 2016.

Projections based on exit polls by broadcaster ARD put the CDU at 27.4 per cent, the Greens at 18.5 per cent, the SPD at 18.3, Die Linke at 12.6 per cent and the far-right Alternative for Germany at 9 per cent.

Sunday’s election was the first time in Germany’s postwar history that a regional election has had to be repeated.

In the 2021 election, Berliners had to queue for hours at polling stations, which ran out of voting papers and ballot boxes. Some stayed open late to cope with the crowds, when broadcasters were already calling the result.

Election observers from the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights body, were in Berlin on Sunday to monitor the poll.