A PARTIAL rerun of Germany’s 2021 election in Berlin brought a decline in support for the governing parties and cost one of them a seat in parliament, official results showed today.

The repeat election was held Sunday in 455 of 2,256 precincts in the capital, which account for only 0.9 per cent of the national electorate.

Germany’s highest court in December ruled that certain districts had to rerun their vote because of they had run out of ballot papers or received the wrong ones during the September 2021 election.

Sunday’s outcome showed noticeable declines in support in Berlin for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and for the smallest party in the coalition, the Free Democrats, while support for the third governing party, the environmentalist Greens, was down only slightly.

The centre-right opposition Christian Democrats, who currently lead nationwide polls, gained support, as did the far-right Alternative for Germany, whose strength has doubled in national surveys since 2021.

Germany’s complex electoral system meant that low turnout in Sunday’s voting, only 69.5 per cent, cost Berlin four seats. Three of those were redistributed to other states. The fourth, held by the Free Democrats, was eliminated — meaning the Bundestag shrinks by a single seat to 735 seats.