Relieved Left, satisfied Ampel: Reactions to the partial rerun of the Bundestag election

"Ruling strengthens democracy" - Relieved Left, satisfied Ampel: Reactions to the partial rerun of the Bundestag election

The 2021 Bundestag election must be repeated due to numerous glitches in 455 of 2256 constituencies in the state of Berlin. This was decided by the Federal Constitutional Court on Tuesday. The judges in Karlsruhe thus went slightly beyond the decision of the Bundestag, which had already voted for a partial repeat in November 2022.

The election rerun will now take place on February 11, as state electoral officer Stephan Bröchler announced in Karlsruhe. Many plans had already been initiated and could now be implemented.

The CDU/CSU parliamentary group did not go far enough with the Bundestag resolution at the time. It turned to the Constitutional Court to ensure that the second votes for the party lists in half of the Berlin constituencies were cast anew. However, the Federal Constitutional Court rejected such a significant expansion, as well as a repetition throughout Berlin.

The first reactions from the capital were not long in coming.

Left party welcomes Karlsruhe ruling: "We will remain in the Bundestag"

The Left Party was relieved. "The ruling makes it clear that we will remain in the Bundestag and continue to fulfill our role as the social opposition," former parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch told the German Press Agency. This partial rerun could not change the outcome in the two constituencies in which the Left had won direct mandates, said Bartsch. As a result, the directly elected MPs Gesine Lötzsch and Gregor Gysi as well as Leipzig MP Sören Pellmann will remain in the Bundestag. This in turn secures the seats of all 39 MPs who still belong to the Left Party today, as well as those who have since left, including the group around Sahra Wagenknecht.

If the election had been repeated in full, a different scenario would have emerged: One of the direct mandates could then have been lost and with it all the seats of the Left Party and the Wagenknecht group that were allocated via lists in 2021. The party has now been spared this. "This means a small but important hurdle has been overcome," said Bartsch. The next step is now the recognition of the 28 remaining Left Party MPs as a separate group.

SPD sees its own legal opinion confirmed

Overall, there was agreement among the politicians that the composition of the Bundestag would probably not change significantly even after the partial rerun. This "should have no effect at all on the majority", said SPD MP Johannes Fechner in Karlsruhe.

SPD leader Saskia Esken also welcomed the ruling. "The plaintiffs tried to wipe this decision off the table in its entirety. The Federal Constitutional Court has not ruled in this way, which also confirms our legal opinion," said Esken in an interview with the German Press Agency. Above all, it is important that this election strengthens trust in democratic structures.

"This ruling strengthens democracy and once again makes it abundantly clear that electoral errors are not a venial sin, but must have consequences in case of doubt," said FDP federal deputy leader Wolfgang Kubicki in the Rheinische Post newspaper.

The Berlin state chairs of the Greens, Nina Stahr and Philmon Ghirmai, declared: "The investigation must continue, structural improvements in the preparation and conduct of elections must be consistently advanced."

For the Berlin AfD, state leader Kristin Brinker welcomed the ruling. "In a functioning democracy, election results must be free from any doubt about how they came about," she explained.

Berlin's mayor expects a smooth repeat election

Berlin's governing mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) has expressed confidence that the upcoming partial re-run of the Bundestag elections in the capital will go smoothly. He has "full confidence" in the state election director Stephan Bröchler "that the elections will run smoothly", explained Wegner after the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court. The Senate had "created all the necessary conditions together with him so that elections in Berlin can function again".