Election on February 23rd
This is how the five percent hurdle works in the federal election
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In the federal election, parties must achieve at least five percent in order to enter parliament. But there are exceptions to the rule – that’s exactly what it says.
Three parties that most people are likely to be familiar with could fail at the five percent hurdle in the federal election on February 23rd: the FDP, the Left and the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). At least that’s what the polls said a few weeks before the election. In all likelihood, none of the so-called “other parties” will get above the magic mark of five percent.
But what exactly does the five percent hurdle mean and what is the legal basis for it? As the Bundestag itself declares, it is “a blocking clause for elections” for our popular representation, and it is regulated in the Federal Elections Act.
According to this, “a party must achieve five percent of the second votes throughout Germany in order to be involved in the distribution of mandates in the Bundestag.”
So if, for example, on election evening it is said that this or that party only received four percent, they will not send any representatives to the Bundestag. Or?
That’s not entirely true. True to the motto “no rule without exception”, there are also special features here: parties of national minorities are not affected by the rule – however, there is currently only one party to which this applies: the South Schleswig Voters’ Association (SSW), the representation of the Danish minority in Germany. She can only be elected in Schleswig-Holstein.
The rule is that the SSW, as a party of a national minority, only has to win enough votes to be entitled to a seat according to the calculation procedure. We don’t want to explain exactly how this is calculated here, but the order of magnitude is a medium five-digit number of second votes that is required.
The SSW actually achieved this in the 2021 federal election: SSW politician Stefan Seidler has been sitting in parliament in Berlin since then as a non-attached member and German-Danish coordinator. This time he needs a good 40,000 votes to get back into parliament. If the SSW gets 110,000 votes, the party would even have two representatives in the German Bundestag in the future. The chances of this happening aren’t all that bad, according to the press in the far north.
There is another way to enter the Bundestag below the five percent threshold: To do this, a party must win three direct mandates. In this case, it will then be represented in the new Bundestag based on the strength of its second vote result. There is an example of this too: The Left only got 4.9 percent of the second votes in 2021. Thanks to three direct mandates in Berlin and Leipzig, she then came to the Bundestag with 39 members.
The traffic light coalition actually wanted to delete this rule as part of the electoral law reform (you can find out more about this here). Because the new regulation will shrink the Bundestag. It gives the second votes more weight. But this rule remained – the change was overturned by the Federal Constitutional Court.
This special feature is called the “basic mandate clause”. It could also enable a party to enter the Bundestag in the federal election on February 23rd – even though it did not clear the five percent hurdle.
Source: Stern

I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.