German federal election, 2017

← 2013

24 September 2017

All 598+ seats in the Bundestag
300+ seats needed for a majority


Leader	Angela Merkel	Martin Schulz	Sahra Wagenknecht & Dietmar Bartsch
Party	CDU/CSU	SPD	Left
Leader since	10 April 2000	–	–
Leader's seat	Vorpommern-Rügen-Greifswald I	–	North Rhine-Westphalia list & Mecklenburg-West Pomerania list
Last election	311 seats, 41.5%	193 seats, 25.7%	64 seats, 8.6%


Leader	Katrin Göring-Eckardt & Cem Özdemir	Christian Lindner	Frauke Petry with Jörg Meuthen
Party	Green	FDP	AfD
Leader since	–	7 December 2013	14 April 2013
Leader's seat	Thuringia list & Baden-Württemberg list	–	–
Last election	63 seats, 8.4%	0 seats, 4.8%	0 seats, 4.7%

Incumbent Chancellor

Angela Merkel
CDU/CSU

The next German federal elections will elect the members of the Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany, on 24 September 2017.

At the previous federal election, in 2013, the incumbent government—composed of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU, the CDU's Bavarian sister party), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP)—failed to achieve a majority of seats. The FDP failed to get over 5% of the vote, denying the party seats in the Bundestag for the first time in their history. In contrast, the CDU/CSU obtained their best result since 1990, with nearly 42% of the vote and just short of 50% of the seats. The CDU/CSU successfully negotiated with the Social Democrats (SPD) to form a grand coalition for the third time.

German law requires that the Bundestag election shall take place on a Sunday between 46–48 months after the assembly's first sitting. Since the 18th Bundestag first sat on 22 October 2013, the latest date for the next election would have been 22 October 2017 and the earliest date 27 August 2017, the first Sunday after 22 August 2017. By convention, recent elections have been held in late September, avoiding the school holidays. Elections can be held earlier under certain conditions, such as the government losing a confidence motion.

In January 2017, the election was scheduled for 24 September 2017.

The Bundestag has 598 nominal members, elected for a four-year term. Half, 299 members, are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting, while a further 299 members are allocated from party lists to achieve a proportional distribution in the legislature, conducted according to a form of proportional representation called the Mixed member proportional representation system (MMP). Voters vote once for a constituency representative, and a second time for a party, and the lists are used to make the party balances match the distribution of second votes. Seats are allocated using the Sainte-Laguë method. If a party receives more seats than its vote share entitles it to (overhang seats), additional "compensatory" seats are added to the total of 299 to give other parties a proportional number of seats.

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Wikipedia