709 members of parliament currently sit in the Bundestag – more than ever before. According to an expert, the number could increase significantly in the course of the next election in September. The calls for a reform of the electoral law are growing louder.
According to calculations by electoral law expert Robert Vehrkamp, the next Bundestag could have a good 1000 MPs. “The range of plausible possible Bundestag sizes runs from around 650 to more than 1000. That cannot be ruled out,” said the expert from the Bertelsmann Foundation of the German Press Agency in Berlin. He is also a member of the commission set up by the Bundestag to reform electoral law and modernize parliamentary work.
The standard size of the Bundestag is 598 seats. Since the 2017 election, it has had 709 members – more than ever before. The CDU / CSU and SPD implemented a change in the electoral law last October, but experts believe that this will hardly lead to the hoped-for downsizing of parliament.
The topic will therefore also occupy the next Bundestag. Above all, the CDU and CSU should finally move, said the first parliamentary manager of the Greens parliamentary group, Britta Haßelmann, of the DPA. “You blocked an effective reform for years and only acted at the last minute,” criticized Haßelmann. “But even the SPD has not invested any particular energy in a necessary change.”
“Doesn’t have to come like this, but it is possible”
An exact prediction about the size of the next Bundestag is not possible according to Vehrkamp’s presentation. “What is often overlooked in the discussion: It doesn’t just depend on the second vote result. It depends at least as much on the split of votes as how many overhang seats there will be. And the splitting behavior is even more incalculable than the allocation of second votes.”
For example, the Greens could get about twice as many second votes as in the 2017 election. “But we don’t know what the splitting behavior of the Greens will look like.” If around 20 percent of them were to give their first vote to the Union – for example because of their old solidarity – that would have “an enormous leverage effect,” said Vehrkamp. “Then, depending on the scenario, you can quickly reach 880, 950 or, in extreme cases, even over 1000 mandates. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it is possible. Given the size of the Bundestag, the current electoral law is a real gamble.”
Vehrkamp calculated the size of the Bundestag from the ARD “Germany trend” of August 5th (CDU / CSU: 27 percent, Greens: 19, SPD: 18, FDP: 12, AfD: 10, Left: 6) using three different splitting scenarios . Depending on the scenario, there are 695, 851 or 978 MPs.
The size of the Bundestag affects the ability to work and politics
The Green politician Haßelmann said of the possible further growth of the parliament: “That would then increase the pressure even more to tackle this terrible reform, for which the CDU / CSU and SPD are responsible.” Your party is sticking to the tried and tested system of personalized proportional representation. “The only reliably effective lever here is the reduction of the constituencies.”
The size of the Bundestag has an enormous impact on its ability to work and politics, said election researcher Vehrkamp. “A Bundestag that is too big worsens the quality of politics.” That could even influence the formation of a government. “The larger the parliamentary groups, the more difficult it could be to organize tight majorities and keep them stable for the duration of the legislative period.”
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