Berlin Revote Won't Wipe Out Gov't Majority, Nor Oust Linke From Parl't

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that the 2021 federal election must be re-run in 455 districts of the capital, Berlin. The court ruled that, partly due to the hosting of the Berlin marathon on the same day as the federal election, the election was badly managed and must be partially repeated on 11 February 2024 for almost one-quarter of Berlin's 2,256 electoral districts.

• In the 2021 federal election, the Social Democrats won a plurality of the vote (23.4%) that translated to four constituency seats and three lists seats. In total the now-incumbent 'traffic light' coalition of the SPD, environmentalist Greens, and pro-business liberal Free Democrats (FDP), won 17 seats in the capital. The repeat election does not threaten the federal coalition's majority status.
• It would also appear that it will not affect the standing of the far-left Die Linke grouping. Linke narrowly qualified for seats in the Bundestag despite falling under the 5% nationwide electoral threshold by way of winning three constituency seats, two of these in Berlin.
• If the new election had seen Linke (which has since fractured into separate factions and seen its support decline) lose either of its two Berlin mandates then all Bundestag members elected on the Linke ticket (39 in 2021) would have lost their seats.
• Kerstin Palz at ARD notes, though, that "The partial revote now decided in Berlin probably has no effect on Linke. [Linke lawmaker Gregor] Gysi's constituency is only affected in 6 of 200 districts, [Gesine] Lötzsch's constituency not at all."