Bundestag election: This means first vote and second vote

The federal election is on Sunday, February 23rd – and as always, voters can cast a first vote and a second vote.

The first vote is the one with which candidates are directly elected – so you can vote for specific people here. They are usually determined by the parties in advance. But it is even possible to run in the election as an individual. To do this, they must collect at least 200 signatures from eligible voters in the constituency.

With the second vote you choose a party – or the list of a party. That vote is gaining weight thanks to the new voting law that was passed by the traffic light coalition in 2023. As a result of the reform, the new Bundestag will also be significantly smaller than our current parliament; it will have a good 100 fewer members.

So far, all directly elected candidates have entered the Bundestag in every case. What counted for the composition of parliament was what percentage the parties received – plus the results of the direct candidates.

However, this has led to the Bundestag becoming ever larger in recent years. There are currently 733 members – the largest freely elected parliament in the world. If you consider that Germany is a rather small to medium-sized country in terms of area and population compared to the rest of the world, the current Bundestag actually seems quite bloated.

The first and second votes still have weight – but with restrictions. The electoral law reform limits the number of parliamentarians to a maximum of 630. This is achieved by eliminating the previously usual overhang and compensatory mandates without replacement.

To date, overhang mandates have always occurred when a party won more direct mandates through the first vote than it received based on its second vote result. She was allowed to keep these mandates. The other parties received compensatory mandates so that the percentage distribution was correct again in the end.

So now that doesn’t exist anymore. The direct mandates from the first vote continue to have priority in the distribution of seats. However, this only applies as long as they are covered by the second vote share of the respective party.

So it may be that someone wins a direct mandate but then cannot enter the Bundestag because the contingent of representatives has been exhausted – in other words: because the party as a whole did not receive enough percentages.

But other rules have remained: the federal territory is divided into 299 constituencies, and the five percent hurdle still stands. In order to enter the Bundestag, a party must receive five percent of the second votes – or win at least three direct mandates.

By the way, people who are independent of a party could – theoretically – still enter the Bundestag through a direct mandate. The principle of second vote coverage does not apply here. However, it has never happened here that a non-party individual candidate made it into parliament – and this is also considered unlikely in the coming federal election.