While three parties made gains in Berlin’s re-run of the 2021 Bundestag election, the make-up of parliament stays largely unchanged.

Berliners vote in 2021 Bundestag re-election

Berliners returned to the polls on February 11 to recast their votes in the 2021 Bundestag election. Just 18,3 percent of eligible voters in the German city took the opportunity to vote.

Following the count, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left SPD remained the largest party in the Bundestag and became the most popular party among Berlin voters - the Greens were the most popular in 2021 - but the SPD still lost 1,2 percentage points of the vote in comparison to the 2021 results. The CDU made the biggest gain of +1,3 percentage points, followed by +1,0 percentage points for the far-right AfD and +0,1 percentage points for the Left Party.

The Greens and the FDP, which together with SPD make up Germany’s governing traffic light coalition, made respective losses of -0,3 percentage points and -0,9 percentage points in comparison to the votes in 2021.

After the vote, four Bundestag members representing Berlin voters lost their seats after dropping out of their party's state list, Nina Stahr (Greens), Lars Lindemann (FPD), Ana-Maria Trasnea (SPD) and Pascal Meiser (the Left Party). When these candidates entered the Bundestag in 2021 they did so in last place on their party's state list, but since voter turnout also determines how seats are shared, last place was not enough this time.

These members will now be replaced by representatives from the same party but in a different federal state. Stahr is to be replaced by Franziska Krumweide-Steiner from North Rhine-Westphalia, Lindemann's seat is to be dropped as the Bundestag gets smaller, Transnea will be replaced by Angela Hohmann from Lower Saxony and Meiser with Christine Buchholz from Hesse.

Why did Berliners re-cast their votes for 2021?

Back in December, Germany’s constitutional court in Baden-Württemberg ruled that within the next 60 days, Berliners living in 455 constituencies had to recast their votes for the 2021 Bundestag election.

The verdict came after deliberations about how to address the disorganisation of the previous election. September 26, 2021 was a quadruple voting day in Berlin: constituents in Berlin were voting in the federal elections, electing state parliamentarians and local councillors, and voting in a referendum on whether to nationalise 240.000 houses and apartments owned by the Deutsche Wohnen & Co property companies.

Polling stations ran out of ballot papers after delivery vans got stuck in transit - all while the Berlin Marathon caused major traffic diversions in the city centre. Some constituents were given the wrong ballot papers or queues were so long that they were turned away. In other cases, those who were already queueing were allowed to cast their ballots after the polls were supposed to officially close at 6pm.

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