One thing that happens very seldom should be noted about the 2014 Brandenburg state election:
All of you probably know that there is a 5% threshold that a party has to pass in order to enter the Bundestag or a Landtag. (There is an exception in Schleswig-Holstein, where the party of the Danish minority, the SSW, is exempt from the threshold.)
On the federal level, however, a party can avoid the 5% hurdle by winning three direct seats via the first vote. That law is called Grundmandatsklausel ("basic mandate clause") and enabled the PDS (the predecessor of the Left) in 1994 to enter the Bundestag as a parlamenatry group.
Some states also offer such a rule: In Berlin, Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein, a party needs to win one direct seat; in Saxony two direct mandates are necessary to avoid the 5% threshold.
Christoph Schulze, a former SPD member, won the constituency Teltow-Fläming III south of Berlin for the BVB/FW (that's what the Free Voters are called in Brandenburg). Hence the Free Voters entered the Landtag with three members despite having only received 2.7% of the second vote. In the meantime Schulze has left the party after severe factionalism.
Out of curiosity, who draws the lines for German constituencies? For not really mattering that much, these constituencies look oddly gerrymandered into strips and other bizarre shapes.
