Monday 13, February
On Monday, there were 427 new Covid-19 infections reported in Berlin. The seven-day incidence currently stands at 61.4 cases per 100,000 people.
Repeat election results: So, who’s in charge of Berlin?
Yesterday saw Berlin head back to the polls for the long-awaited repeated election – and the results were something of a surprise. With 28.2 percent of the votes, the strongest party was the Christian Democrats, making this the best performance by the CDU since 1999. Tied for second place are the SPD and the Greens, both with the exact same proportion of the vote: 18.4 percent. In fact, the SPD (who had led the ruling coalition) are a mere 105 votes ahead of their coalition partner. The fourth biggest party was Die Linke with 12.2 percent, followed by the AfD with 9.1 percent. The pro-business party the FDP didn’t manage the requisite 5 percent, and will therefore get no seats in the parliament.
As for what this all means, we don’t yet know. The parties will now enter negotiations to form the new government.
Usually, the strongest party gets the first chance to build a coalition and the CDU are expected to invite the other parties for talks in the coming days. But it remains to be seen if they will be able to come to an agreement. As things stand, there are four possible configurations which could form the next Berlin government.
Based on their party colours, the coalitions are:
- The “Kenya coalition” (red, black and green) of CDU, SPD and Green – 75 %
- Red-Green-Red or Green-Red-Red (with either the SPD or the Greens as the lead party) – 56 %
- The “Big Coalition” of CDU and SPD – 54%
- Black-Green – 54%
Before the election, the parties in the current (Red-Green-Red) configuration have said that they would prefer to continue with this option. But we’ll have to see what kind of deals are made over the next days and hours.
