After two long months of campaigning, Germany heads to the polls today for its federal election. Approximately 60 million voters across the country’s 16 states will elect the new government. Will incumbent SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party be punished for his three years in power? Will the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) cruise to its highest ever federal result? Will Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU do well enough to only need one partner to form a coalition? This is what to watch out for tonight.
To enter the Bundestag, the parties need to win at least 5 per cent of the national vote. The German proportional representation system means that everyone gets two votes: the first goes towards selecting individual candidates in a constituency from each party’s official list; the second is a vote for a particular party that goes towards its national vote share. The vote share each party wins nationally determines how many of their constituency candidates enter parliament.
For Olaf Scholz, the map of how the country intends to vote makes for humbling viewing
To a large degree, the results of today’s votes have been baked in for a long time.
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