Skip to content
Next Germany: Federal Convention elects the President in 87 days Preview →
Wahlrecht Germany
How to vote

✶ Germany · Bundeswahlgesetz §§ 4–6 (2023)

Two votes,
one count.

The Erststimme picks a person for each of 299 constituencies. The Zweitstimme decides how many of the 630 seats each party gets. Since 2023 the second vote also decides which constituency winners actually sit.

From ballots
to 630 seats.

  1. Who qualifies

    A party needs 5 % of valid second votes nationally (§ 4(2) BWahlG). After the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling of 30 July 2024, winning three constituencies also qualifies it, until the Bundestag legislates again. Parties of the Danish, Frisian, Sorbian and Sinti and Roma minorities are exempt: the SSW took a seat with 0,15 %.

  2. Upper apportionment

    The 630 seats (less any won by independents) are divided among qualifying parties in proportion to their second votes by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers method: divide each party's votes by 0,5, 1,5, 2,5 … and hand out seats to the largest quotients. The CSU, which stands only in Bavaria, counts as a party of its own.

  3. Lower apportionment

    Each party's seats are then divided among its 16 Land lists, again by Sainte-Laguë on second votes.

  4. Zweitstimmendeckung

    In each Land, the party's constituency winners take its seats first, in order of their share of the first vote. If it won more constituencies than it has seats, the winners with the weakest shares get nothing and the constituency has no member of its own (§ 6(1) BWahlG). Seats left over go down the list.

Until 2021 every constituency winner kept the seat, and other parties got balancing seats until the house was proportional again: the Bundestag grew to 709 in 2017 and 736 in 2021. The 2023 reform fixed it at 630 by capping winners instead.

Worked example · CDU in Hesse

20 won,
15 seated.

The CDU's second votes earned it 15 of Hesse's seats, but it won 20 constituencies. Its winners are ranked by first-vote share; the 5 at the bottom are left out.

  1. 1 Fulda · Michael Brand 43,3 %
  2. 2 Main-Taunus · Norbert Altenkamp 39,8 %
  3. 3 Hochtaunus · Markus Koob 37,8 %
  4. 4 Rheingau-Taunus – Limburg · Klaus-Peter Willsch 36,8 %
  5. 5 Bergstraße · Dr. Michael Meister 36,3 %
  6. 6 Lahn-Dill · Johannes Volkmann 34,3 %
  7. 7 Main-Kinzig – Wetterau II – Schotten · Johannes Wiegelmann 34,1 %
  8. 8 Odenwald · Patricia Lips 34,0 %
  9. 9 Wetterau I · Dr. Thomas Pauls 33,7 %
  10. 10 Werra-Meißner – Hersfeld-Rotenburg · Wilhelm Gebhard 32,3 %
  11. 11 Hanau · Pascal Reddig 32,0 %
  12. 12 Offenbach · Björn Simon 31,2 %
  13. 13 Waldeck · Jan-Wilhelm Pohlmann 31,1 %
  14. 14 Wiesbaden · Dr. Stefan Korbach 30,7 %
  15. 15 Gießen · Frederik Bouffier 30,4 %
  16. 16 Groß-Gerau · Marcus Kretschmann 30,3 %
  17. 17 Schwalm-Eder · Anna-Maria Bischof 30,1 %
  18. 18 Frankfurt am Main II · Leopold Born 27,4 %
  19. 19 Darmstadt · Astrid Mannes 26,7 %
  20. 20 Frankfurt am Main I · Yannick Schwander 26,0 %

Seat lab · 2025 second votes

Change
the rules.

Rerun the 2025 result. A 3 % threshold would have let the BSW and FDP in; D'Hondt favours big parties; keeping every winner would have made the house 653.

Method
Constituency winners

630 seats · majority 316

    By Land: covered winners, uncovered winners, list seats

    2025 · constituencies won and seats

    Who lost
    winners.

    PartySecond votesSeatsConstituencies wonNot covered
    CDU 22,6 % 164 143 15
    AfD 20,8 % 152 46 4
    SPD 16,4 % 120 45 1
    Grüne 11,6 % 85 12 —
    Linke 8,8 % 64 6 —
    CSU 6,0 % 44 47 3
    SSW 0,2 % 1 0 —

    Recomputed from the official results with the code that runs the seat lab; it matches the Bundeswahlleiterin's result seat for seat, including all 23 uncovered winners (Flensburg – Schleswig (SH), Rostock – Landkreis Rostock II (MV), Bremen I (HB), Oberhavel – Havelland II (BB) …).