The political blow is hard for Olaf Scholz. The German Chancellor’s Social Democratic Party suffered a bitter setback on Sunday in a highly symbolic local election in Berlin, its stronghold for more than twenty years, against the Conservatives. Even if this defeat was played out above all on local issues, it comes at a time when at the national level Olaf Scholz is himself under pressure, criticized in particular for his procrastination with a view to supporting Ukraine militarily.
The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel came first in the election for the German capital’s local parliament with 28.2% of the vote (+ 10 points), according to projections public television channels broadcast at the end of the evening.
Battle for 2nd place
The Social Democrats had to settle for 18.4%, their worst result since the end of the Second World War. Worse even for the SPD, it is neck and neck with environmentalists who could ultimately relegate them to 3rd position. Berlin’s outgoing mayor, Franziska Giffey, spoke of a “bitter evening” and a “difficult situation” for her party. Since 2001, the SPD had always finished this election in the lead.
Olaf Scholz’s party may have difficulty in these conditions to keep the post of mayor of the city-state of Berlin which he has held for more than twenty years. He might have to settle for a place as a “junior” partner in a coalition led by the Greens, with the radical left, two parties with which the Social Democrats now rule the city, or by the Conservatives.
In the last ballot in the Berlin local parliament in 2021, the SPD still managed to narrowly win, with 21.4%. But the election had been marked by unprecedented organizational dysfunction, which eventually led to its cancellation and a new election, a first in the history of German regional elections since World War II.
New Year’s Eve violence
This time, the SPD seems to have been penalized by the scenes of violence and chaos during the last New Year’s Eve in Berlin, when firefighters and police were targeted by fireworks in certain neighborhoods with a large immigrant population. The Berlin results also confirm the trends observed at the national level for many months, namely a strong erosion of the social democratic party in power, an increase in the conservative opposition and also in the far-right formation Alternative for Germany. (AfD).
The election, without calling into question the national coalition in power in Germany, also risks weakening the chancellor. Berlin is indeed a state-region in its own right in the German federal system and a change of majority in the capital could have repercussions on one of the two chambers of the federal parliament, the Bundesrat, representing the 16 Länder.