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Berliners are to vote again on 12 February 2023

 

 

 

Berlin´s citizens are to vote again on 12 February 2023 as the original election held on 26 September 2021 was declared invalid by the Berlin Constitutional Court in November last year. This was a consequence of numerous electoral errors during the original vote, such as shortages of ballot papers, exceptionally long queues to vote, ballots being delivered to the wrong locations, and in some cases voters being turned away or offered only ballot papers for the federal election.

The Berlin Constitutional Court has decided that the election of both the Berlin House of Representatives and the district councils must be repeated entirely. The Court has ruled that the re-elections will not trigger a new legislative period and the new coalition is to continue the currently running legislative period.

The strongest parties competing for the Berliners´ votes are again are the SPD (Social Democrats), CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union), The Left, The Greens, the FDP (Free Democrats) and the AfD (Alternative for Germany, a far right party).

As of now, the latest forecasts suggest that the Christian Democrats could become the largest party (CDU: 22-22.5%), followed by the Greens (19-20%) and the SPD (18-19%).

Once the results are in on 12 February, the leading parties will have to enter coalitions talks and form a new coalition, although chances exist that the current formation, Red-Green-Red, remains in place.

Possible coalition formations can be seen on the website DAWUM – Presentation and evaluation of election polls, or on Tagesspiegel Interaktiv.