Date assignment The
Basic Law and the provide that regular federal elections must be held on a Sunday or on a national holiday no earlier than 46 and no later than 48 months after the start of a legislative session. The 21st Bundestag was constituted on 25 March 2025 and has therefore been in session for months. Accordingly, a scheduled federal election would have to take place on one of the following dates: • 28 January 2029 • 4, 11, 18, 25 February 2029 or • 4, 11, 18, 25 March 2029 The exact date will be determined by the
president of Germany in due course. Federal elections can be held earlier, if the President of Germany dissolves the Bundestag and schedules a
snap election. However, this is only possible under two scenarios described by the Basic Law: • Failed election of chancellor: If the Bundestag fails to elect a chancellor with an absolute majority of its members by the 15th day after the first ballot, the president is free to either appoint the candidate who received a plurality of votes on the last ballot as chancellor or to dissolve the Bundestag (in accordance with Article 63, Section 4 of the Basic Law). • Lost
motion of confidence by the chancellor: The chancellor has the right to submit a motion to the Bundestag for a vote of confidence in him. If this motion fails, the Chancellor has various options for action, including requesting the President to dissolve the Bundestag. The President is free to accept or reject this request (within 21 days, in accordance with Article 68 of the Basic Law). In both cases, federal snap elections would have to take place on a Sunday or national holiday no later than 60 days after the dissolution. No elections can be held during a state of defense; if this prolongs a legislative period, new elections must be held no later than six months after the end of the state of defense.
Electoral system in the
Kassel district. The column for the constituency vote (with the name, occupation, and address of each candidate) is on the left in black print; the column for the party list vote (showing top five list candidates in the state) is on the right in blue print. Germany uses the
mixed-member proportional representation system, a system of
proportional representation combined with elements of
first-past-the-post voting. Every elector has two votes: a constituency vote (
first vote) and a party list vote (
second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected in
single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The proportional distribution of seats among the parties is calculated on the basis of the second votes. The seats won by a party through the second votes are then distributed internally among the states, depending on how many second votes the party received in the individual states (the
Sainte-Laguë method is used both for the distribution of seats between the parties and for the internal distribution of a party's seats among the states). In most cases, the number of constituencies won by a party in a given state does not exactly correspond to the number of seats to which the party is entitled in that state proportionally. This is balanced in two different ways: • If a party wins fewer constituencies in a state than it is entitled to based on the second-vote result, the highest-placed candidates from the state list are elected accordingly to the additional seats. • If a party wins more constituency seats in a state than its second votes would entitle it to, the principle of second vote coverage (
Zweitstimmendeckung) applies. This means that only the correspondent number of constituency winners with the highest percentage of first votes receive a seat. Constituency winners who have not won a seat in this case are given priority over the candidates on the respective state list in the event that a member leaves parliament prematurely during the legislative session. To qualify for any seats, however, a party must either win three single-member constituencies via first votes () or exceed a
threshold of
5% of the second votes nationwide. This does not apply to independent constituency candidates, however: these always enter the Bundestag if they win their constituency, which hardly ever happens. There were
three in 1949, with candidates that were related to parties. Parties representing recognized national minorities (
Danes,
Frisians,
Sorbs, and
Romani people) are exempt from both the 5% national threshold and the basic mandate clause, but must still meet state-level qualifications. The only party that so far has been willing and able to benefit from this provision on the
federal level is the
South Schleswig Voters' Association, which represents the minorities of Danes and Frisians in
Schleswig-Holstein and managed to win a seat in
1949,
2021, and
2025. The electoral law described here was adopted in 2023 and was used for the first time in the 2025 election. At the time, the CDU/CSU-faction criticized in particular the new aspect of so-called second vote coverage, and intends to reform electoral law again so that all constituency winners are once again guaranteed a seat, as had been the case before 2023. It is therefore possible that this electoral law will be changed before the next election. == Political parties and leaders ==