Bundestag election 2025: All information about postal voting, parties and election helpers

If you cannot or do not want to go to the polling station on the election Sunday, February 23, you can also vote by postal voting. This is precisely regulated, the federal election management in Wiesbaden announced: “All voters registered in the electoral list will receive an election notification from your community by February 2, 2025 at the latest.” All citizens who were registered with the main apartment with their municipality on January 12 and on the 42nd day before the election are registered in the electoral register.

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The election notifications also indicate the respective polling station for voters on February 23. Anyone who has not received any election notification by February 2 should immediately ask for a review at the election office at the site of their main apartment. This is how the postal vote works in the Bundestag election 2025.

In the Bundestag election, the voters coordinate with the ballot. Either on the election day itself in the voting cabin or before, by postal voting. Filling out the ballot paper is basically simple – but you can also go wrong. This is what the ballot looks like in the 2025 Bundestag election and that should be observed.

In the Bundestag election, the Chancellor is not chosen directly, but by the MPs in Parliament. In addition to the CDU/CSU, SPD and the Greens, the AfD and the BSW also nominated their candidates for the CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens. In detail: This is how the electoral system works in Germany.

The first voice is the one with which candidates are selected directly – here you can choose certain people. With the second vote you choose a party – or the list of a party. Here you read more about what first and second voice mean in the 2025 Bundestag election.

In the federal election, parties have to reach at least five percent to move into parliament. But there are exceptions from the rule-that is exactly what the five percent hurdle says. At the five percent hurdle in the Bundestag election on February 23, three parties could fail that should be known to most people: the FDP, the left and the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance (BSW).

41 parties can participate. As the federal election manager announced, the Federal Election Committee decided. This approved fewer parties than in the last election in 2021. For most parties, however, there is another hurdle for participation.

In 2021, the Federal Election Committee initially approved 53 parties. If you are not already represented in the Bundestag or in a state parliament with five MPs, you will have to meet another condition then as now: you have to collect support signatures for your specific election proposals. Not everyone succeeded in 2021. Therefore, only 47 parties came to election.

The election committee found for the Bundestag election 2025 that ten parties do not need signature lists because they are already represented in sufficient numbers in the Bundestag or state parliament. The Südschleswig Voters’ Association (SSW) also does not have to do this as a party of a national minority. Because of this status, the five percent hurdle for the move into the Bundestag does not apply to him. From Agrar-O-Mat to Wahlswiper: These alternatives are available for the election machine in the Bundestag election 2025.

The Federal Foreign Office assumes that three to four million Germans are entitled to vote abroad in the early Bundestag election. Since there was no obligation to report abroad, these figures were only appreciated, said a spokesman. In the latest Bundestag election in 2021, 130,000 Germans had entered the voter register abroad. The Federal Foreign Office called the Germans abroad to register as quickly as possible and to ensure the shipping of the documents in exchange with the home community.

For some voters, participation in the election on February 23, according to the Federal Foreign Office, could become scarce this time. It is possible that postal voting documents would not be in time or were not back in Germany in time, said the spokesman. “Of course we see what we can do to support,” he added.

Despite the narrow period until the early Bundestag election, the federal states expect sufficient election helpers. This had resulted in a survey by the Editorial Network Germany (RND) several weeks before the election. A spokesman for federal election manager Ruth Brand told the RND that she assumed that “sufficient volunteers will be won over”.

The chief managing director of the German Association of Cities and Municipalities, André Berghegger, also assumes that, despite shortened deadlines, there are sufficient helpers in the election, as he told the RND newspapers. “Despite the current exceptional situation, including shortened deadlines, numerous election workers will provide their commitment and time.”

According to the report in Germany, around 675,000 election workers took part in the European elections last June.

Sources: ,, with news agencies