How Does the German Electoral System Work?

How Does the German Electoral System Work?

In the elections to the Bundestag, each voter has two votes. The first vote (Erststimme) is given to candidates of parties in the districts; the second vote (Zweitstimme) is given to the party list (Landesliste). The candidate which gets the plurality of votes in the electoral district wins. The second votes determine how many representatives will be send from each party to the Bundestag. There are 598 representatives in all. The number of representatives for each party is determined according to Hare/Niemeyer formula.

In the first procedure for distributing the seats, the number of seats for each party is determined. In this procedure, the second votes at the national level of the parties' lists are added. The Hare/Niemeyer methode is applied to all of these votes, thereby determining the total seats for each party. In the distribution of the seats, only those parties participate which, at the national level (until 1956, at the federal state level), reached the 5 percent threshold or were able to get three direct seats.

The second procedure for the assignment of seats uses, once again, the Hare/Niemeyer formula for determining how many seats correspond to each party at the list level, given the total number of representatives won at the national level. Only after having defined how many seats correspond to each party in each Land or federal state, then the direct seats that correspond to each party are figured out. If one party has won more direct seats with the first votes than those that correspond to it according to the second votes, the party may retain those seats, such that the total number of seats temporarily increases (these are the so-called excess seats or Ueberhangmandate).