The Federal Constitutional Court today ordered a partial rerun of the 2021 federal election in 455 of Berlin’s 2,256 constituencies and the corresponding postal voting districts, due to widespread irregularities found in the process. The most likely date for holding the elections is considered to be February 11, 2024.

Following a complaint by the parliamentary group of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU), the Federal Parliament had already decided in November 2022 that there were grounds for repeat elections in 327 districts, however the Constitutional Court increased the districts to 455. The postal vote districts corresponding to in them there are 104 out of 1507.

Following the announcement of the decision, the governor/mayor of Berlin Kai Wegner (CDU) expressed his full confidence in the relevant state agencies and assured that “all the right conditions have been created for the elections to run smoothly”. The election process should be repeated by February 11 at the latest.

There was particular concern about the Court’s decision in the Left, whose parliamentary group was dissolved a few days ago, after the independence of 10 MPs. The party had secured its entry into the Bundestag thanks to the direct election of three of its members, two of them in Berlin. But the repetition of the process does not affect the specific regions, so “the Left will be able to remain in the Bundestag as a social opposition”, said the former leader of its parliamentary group, Dietmar Bartz.

If the specific mandates were lost, the Left – and the ten MPs originally elected with the party – would have to leave the federal parliament.

The rerun of the elections may, however, even theoretically, affect the composition of the Berlin delegation in the Bundestag.

Due to even more widespread irregularities and problems in the electoral process, on 12 February 2023 state elections were repeated across Berlin, even reversing the 2021 result, with the CDU winning over the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The Constitutional Court, however, ruled that the problems found in the polling centers were not as serious as in the case of the federal elections, and for this reason it is not deemed necessary to repeat this process as a whole, but only part of it.