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Let's nerd out and look at how the elections to the German Bundestag work.
The first place to look is the ballot paper:
It looks somewhat more complicated than, say, a British one but that's primarily
because you should vote twice.
Each vote works differently:
The first vote is for a constituency MP,
A simple first-past-the-post vote for a specific candidate. It's familiar to British people.
The only substantial difference here is the German ballot tells you where the
candidate lives and what their profession is,
just in case that influences your vote.
The second vote is actually more important.
You vote for a party list, as printed on the ballot.
You don't have to choose the same party as your first vote,
but you can if you want to.
So why is the second vote more important?
Let's take a look at some hypothetical results:
If we take a state with 50 constituencies
- and say -
nominally 100 seats up for grabs,
The results of the first vote could look something like this:
Fifty seats distributed among the parties
but with one party dominating because they came out top in most constituencies.
The result from the second vote is eye-opening
While party A was the largest, it was not so much more successful than the
others to deserve so many seats.
So, in this situation,
the German system uses the results from the second vote
to divide the remaining seats - so that overall,
the number of seats won
matches the proportion of the second votes the party got.
So, in this case,
party B gets an extra 15 seats from its party list bring it up to 25 seats,
reflecting the 25% share of the second vote that it received.
Party C and D are topped-up to 25 and 20 seats respectively.
But what about A?
It won more direct elections than it should have, based purely on the share of
the second vote. It won 35 direct elections when it otherwise
would only be entitled to 30.
It gets to keep those seats. The extra five are called 'overhang' seats.
Taking the total number of seats won by all of the parties
to 105. In real life, the Bundestag has 299 constituencies
with 598 seats nominally up for grabs.
But you get the point... Or at least, I hope so.
Visit Won't Mention The War for other insights into German life,
all in English.