Berlin’s Wall disappeared more than three decades ago. Its political geography did not. Across the city, voting patterns have repeatedly traced invisible boundaries, revealing how history, age, education, housing, migration and everyday priorities continue to shape the capital’s electoral map.
An analysis by Die Zeit, examining voting patterns across Berlin since reunification, shows a city whose political divisions have changed substantially since 1990 but have never disappeared. The old East-West frontier has gradually given way to another distinction: the increasingly visible divide between Berlin’s inner city and its outer districts.
The transformation is evident in the results of successive elections. In December 1990, at the first election to Berlin’s House of Representatives after reunification, the political boundary appeared almost to follow the old Berlin Wall itself. The western part of the city was dominated by the CDU, while the SPD performed more strongly in the eastern districts.
The election took place on the same day as the first all-German Bundestag election. The CDU of Helmut Kohl, the chancellor associated with German reunification, achieved a level of success that it would not reach again. In Berlin, the result was also shaped by the collapse of the city’s red-green government only 17 days before the election, with West Berlin voters delivering a political rebuke to the broken administration.
In the eastern part of the city, however, the SPD initially enjoyed a different kind of political credibility. In the urban and secularised environment of the former East German capital, its leading figures had played important roles in the peaceful revolution. Unlike the East German CDU, the SPD had not belonged to the ruling party system of the GDR for decades.
That advantage did not last.
By 2001, the PDS, now the Left, had captured much of East Berlin, approaching an absolute majority. During Gerhard Schröder’s period as federal chancellor, the PDS was perceived in the East as a party representing specifically eastern German interests. It was deeply rooted in East Berlin and was able to draw on structures inherited from the SED, whose former members were not welcomed by the SPD. Its leading candidate, Gregor Gysi, also contributed to its popularity.
The figures were striking. The PDS won almost 48 percent in East Berlin, while the CDU received only 12 percent there. At the same time, the CDU’s earlier dominance in West Berlin had begun to disappear. The election was brought forward after a scandal surrounding the state-owned Bankgesellschaft Berlin caused the governing grand coalition to collapse. Klaus Wowereit successfully presented the SPD as an agent of political renewal.
By 2011, however, the old Wall had ceased to be Berlin’s dominant electoral boundary. The traces of the former Iron Curtain remained visible, but another dividing line had become increasingly important: inside versus outside.
The centre of Berlin was becoming increasingly green. The phenomenon strengthened in subsequent elections, with the Green political core eventually extending almost precisely to the S-Bahn Ring. According to Die Zeit’s analysis, the population inside the centre is, on average, younger, more international and more highly educated than the population outside it. Those characteristics correspond closely with the social profile of the Greens.
Berlin therefore became an especially pronounced example of a pattern visible in other German cities: the emergence of strong Green political cores in metropolitan centres.
The 2023 repeat election demonstrated how far this new geography had developed. The CDU became the strongest party, while the Greens remained powerful in the inner districts and the CDU captured almost all of the outer areas. Beyond the S-Bahn Ring, there are more older people, families and homeowners. Issues such as cars, security and functioning infrastructure carry greater weight there than in the inner districts.
The CDU’s emphasis on cars during Kai Wegner’s campaign resonated particularly strongly in the outer districts. Its strongest results came in Berlin’s far west, including Spandau, Reinickendorf and Steglitz-Zehlendorf.
Yet the emerging map is more complicated than a simple contest between two parties or two halves of the city. The AfD has historically had a limited presence in Berlin, winning only 28 electoral districts as the strongest party in 2023, all in the far east. At the 2025 Bundestag election, however, it also succeeded in peripheral districts in the north and west.
Berlin nevertheless remains a difficult environment for the AfD, whose leader Tino Chrupalla described the capital at the start of the campaign as a “No-go-Area an sich”. Berlin’s political identity, as described in the Die Zeit analysis, is associated with characteristics such as being left-wing, multicultural, environmentally conscious, queer and urban. The AfD has so far experienced its greatest difficulties in metropolitan areas, while achieving its strongest results in rural and structurally weaker regions.
The significance of Berlin extends beyond the capital itself because its electorate contains groups that are increasingly important to politics across Germany. One is its young population. Berlin is among Germany’s youngest federal states, with large numbers of students and people entering the workforce. The traditional mainstream parties have particular difficulty with younger voters.
Another defining group is Berlin’s population with a migration background. Almost 42 percent of Berlin’s population has a migration background, compared with 31 percent nationally. Many are eligible to vote, but their party loyalties are described as considerably weaker than they were in the past.
And then there is housing. Rents have become the dominant issue of the 2026 election campaign. Since 2012, asking rents in Berlin have more than doubled, representing an exceptionally large increase by German standards. Four-fifths of Berliners rent their homes, substantially more than the national average.
Transport and mobility follow housing as major concerns, while migration plays a comparatively subordinate role.
The result is a political map that can no longer be explained simply by the line that once divided East and West. The Berlin Wall has disappeared physically, and its electoral significance has diminished. In its place, a new geography has emerged — one shaped by the contrast between centre and periphery, younger and older residents, renters and homeowners, international urban communities and outer-district families.
As Berlin votes, the colour of the political map may change again. But the underlying question raised by Die Zeit’s analysis is less about which party occupies which district at a particular moment than about what the city’s voting geography reveals about Berlin itself.
The old wall divided two political systems. The new boundaries are less visible, but they may be just as revealing.
