Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats crashed to their worst-ever result in Berlin, failing to win an election in the German capital for the first time since 1999 as the conservative Christian Democrats surged to victory.
(Bloomberg) — Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats crashed to their worst-ever result in Berlin, failing to win an election in the German capital for the first time since 1999 as the conservative Christian Democrats surged to victory.
The CDU took 28.2% of the vote in the regional election, compared with 18% in 2021, according to preliminary results with all precincts reporting. Support for the SPD, led by Mayor Franziska Giffey, slumped to 18.4% from 21%, level with the Greens, who slipped from 19% in 2021.
Although the outcome will be seen as a triumph for the Christian Democrats — and its main candidate Kai Wegner — it won’t necessarily lead to a CDU-led coalition. Wegner lacks the support of other parties he would need to lead any viable city government.
If Giffey fails to hold on to power, she could be replaced by the Greens’ top Berlin lawmaker, Bettina Jarasch, in the current three-way coalition with the Left party. The SPD was narrowly ahead of the Greens in terms of votes counted, with 278,978 to 278,873, giving both parties 34 seats in the legislature compared to the CDU’s 52.
“We ran with the clear message that we want Berlin to work,” Wegner told jubilant supporters in Berlin, adding that he planned to hold coalition talks in the coming days.
“It’s our task now — and the voters have given us this — to form a stable government, a government that works together in a trusting way,” he said. “We want to form a government that really gets down to business, that solves the problems that Berlin has.”
Giffey was appointed to run the German capital after narrowly winning the regional vote held in September 2021 on the same day as the most-recent national election swept Scholz into the chancellery. Due to irregularities including missing voting slips and logistical problems, a repeat was ordered by Berlin’s top court.
She ran a lackluster campaign which lacked a convincing plan to solve one of the city’s most urgent problems: the dearth of affordable housing. Wegner was also able to tap into public outrage over violent scenes on New Year’s Eve with a strong message on security and law of order.
“This result shows that the Berliners are not satisfied with how things currently are,” a grim-looking Giffey said on ARD television. She did not rule out continuing in office but said the full results must be known first before any decisions are taken.
The Greens’ Jarasch said that the ruling three parties retained a clear majority and that the party favored continuing the alliance with the SPD and the Left — ideally under her leadership.
The SPD’s catastrophic performance will be seen as a blow to Scholz, who has come in for criticism at home and abroad since Russia invaded Ukraine over a perceived lack of strong leadership and apparent reluctance to get military assistance to the government in Kyiv as fast as possible.
The Social Democrats have been trailing the conservative CDU/CSU alliance at the national level since around the middle of last year, polls show. However, Scholz’s personal approval rating is still significantly higher than any of the main opposition figures, including Friedrich Merz, the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union.
Scholz’s Free Democrat coalition partners at the federal level crashed out of the Berlin state parliament, with preliminary results showing their support had slumped to below the 5% threshold.
That could create problems for the chancellor as FDP Chairman Christian Lindner, who is also the finance minister, will likely be less willing to compromise as their alliance with the Greens attempts to push through its agenda. The far-right AfD gained support compared with 2021, rising to 9.1% from 8%.
The national vote in Berlin must also be repeated but only at about a fifth of the city’s 2,257 polling stations, according to a decision by Bundestag lawmakers in November. No date has been set pending possible court challenges.
There are three more regional elections in Germany this year — in the city state of Bremen on May 14 and in Bavaria and Hesse on October 8. The next national election is due in the fall of 2025.
–With assistance from Boris Groendahl and Zoe Schneeweiss.
(Updates with latest preliminary results starting in fourth paragraph)
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