History. 7 of 8. The wait ran from 18 days (Hesse 1987) to 81 days (Bremen 2019). In Hesse 1982 no one won the vote and a new election followed.
Hunch.
The timing market resolves on the same record: YES if the Berlin parliament elects any person Governing Mayor on or before 10 December 2026, NO otherwise. The Senate Chancellery list of mayors and reports by Reuters or The Guardian are the backup.
We looked for cases where a party that had never led a German state came first in a state election without a majority, while a majority without it was also possible. We checked every state election since 1946 in the official results and found eight such cases, from 1974 to 2019. In each we asked whether the first party's candidate became head of government, and how long the state parliament took to elect one.