BERLIN — Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats lost the Berlin election on Sunday to the conservative Christian Democrats, failing to win the regional vote for the first time in almost 25 years.
According to an exit poll cited by public broadcaster ARD, the CDU was the strongest party with 27.5%, up from 18% in 2021. Support for the SPD dropped to 18.5% from 21%, its worst result ever, while the Greens were also on 18.5%, compared with 19%, the poll showed.
It would be the first time the SPD has failed to come first in a Berlin regional election since 1999, when the CDU won with more than 40% of the vote. If SPD Mayor Franziska Giffey fails to hold on to power, she could be replaced by the Greens’ top Berlin lawmaker, Bettina Jarasch.
Giffey could nonetheless cling on to her job at the head of her current coalition with the Greens and Left party as the CDU and its main candidate Kai Wegner lack the support of other parties they would need to lead any viable coalition.
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. Due to irregularities including missing voting slips and logistical problems, a repeat was ordered by Berlin’s top court.
If the result is confirmed, the SPD’s relatively poor 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, although 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.
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.
