Berlin Lichtenberg (electoral district)

Berlin Lichtenberg is one of the 299 single member constituencies used for the German parliament, the Bundestag. Located in East Berlin, the constituency was created for the 2002 election and all elections to date have been won by The Left Party or their predecessors, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Although the constituency has proved to be a safe seat for The Left, its creation proved controversial as it combined two of their best areas in Berlin into one constituency, resulting in the reduction of their number of seats from four to two and consequently costing them a further 15 national list MPs as they had failed to meet the qualifying threshold of winning three constituencies.

The constituency, numbered constituency 87 by the German electoral authorities, contains the whole of the Berlin borough of Lichtenberg. This borough, a merger of the former boroughs of Lichtenberg and Hohenschönhausen, was created by the 2001 administrative reform.

Historically the two boroughs had been in different constituencies. Hohenschönhausen had been associated with Pankow in constituency number 258, Berlin Pankow – Hohenschönhausen – Weissensee II, which was used for the 1990 election, and constituency 261 Berlin Hohenschönhausen – Pankow – Weissensee which was used for the 1994 and 1998 elections. Lichtenberg had been divided between the constituencies of Berlin Friedrichshain – Treptow – Lichtenberg I and Berlin Köpenick – Lichtenberg II for the 1990 election. It was then united in the Berlin Friedrichshain - Lichtenberg constituency for the 1994 and 1998 elections.

The boundary changes which took effect for the 2002 election combined the Hohenschönhausen and Lichtenberg areas while the redrawn Pankow constituency gained the western section of Prenzlauer Berg from the abolished Berlin Mitte - Prenzlauer Berg constituency. Friedrichshain was combined with Kreuzberg, part of the former West Berlin where the PDS had historically been weak. These boundary changes proved significant as the PDS had won the Pankow constituency by just 3,293 votes in 1998 and out of the 23 Berlin boroughs then in existence, Hohenschönhausen had produced their fourth highest vote share, 41.4% against the SPD vote of 31.5%. In contrast, in the newly added Prenzlauer Berg section, SPD had led PDS in the Prenzlauer Berg borough as a whole by 38.2% to 34.0% Controversy arose as figures published by the head of the German Statistics office suggested that the PDS would have won two seats in Berlin in 2002 under the redrawn boundaries instead of the four that they had actually won.

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