Parliamentary Elections, 23 February 2025

The Federal Republic of Germany held parliamentary elections on 23 February 2025. Chancellor Olaf Scholz had lost a confidence vote on 16 December 2024, and the President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved the parliament on 27 December. 

Germany uses an additional member system, which has also been referred to as a system of personalized proportional representation (DW n.d.). Each voter has two votes. One is for a particular candidate in that voter’s single-member constituency. The second is a party vote at the federal state level using a list system (ACE n.d.). There is a five per cent threshold for party lists to gain representation in the Bundestag, except for parties winning at least three single-seat districts or representing certain national minorities (OSCE/ODIHR 2025).

The Federal Elections Act provides the legal guidance for German elections, but there is technically no established electoral management body as such. Federal elections are administered by the Federal Retuning Officer and the Federal Electoral Committee (Federal Returning Officer n.d.). 

This election took place in the winter, meaning campaigns were affected. Campaigners were still able to deliver materials door-to-door, but there were a limited number of outdoor events (OSCE/ODIHR 2025). 

Of 4,506 candidates contesting the election 1,422 (31.6 per cent) were women—35 per cent of those on party lists and 27 per cent of candidates running at constituency level (OSCE/ODIHR 2025). A comparable proportion of female MPs were returned to the new Bundestag (32.4 per cent), 3.1 per cent lower than in 2021 (OSCE/ODIHR 2025).

During the campaign, a disinformation video claimed some ballots in Leipzig were missing the name of an AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) candidate. Election officials in Leipzig debunked the videos explaining that all ballots were printed in a single production run, making the error impossible (Lunday 2025). In Hamburg, the authorities faced a similar incident when a video surfaced purporting to show postal votes with the AfD marked being shredded. Election authorities in Hamburg quickly proved the inauthenticity of the videos.. Authorities later determined they were likely to be the work of a known Russian propaganda group, Storm-1516 (Tagesschau 2025). 

This election saw an uptick in violence against candidates—particularly of left leaning parties, those with immigrant backgrounds and women. For example, a candidate from Die Linke (the Left party) was racially assaulted in Baden-Württemburg. A candidate from Dortmund was threatened and harassed to the point of considering withdrawing (OSCE 2025; BpB 2025). There were at least eight cases reported in the media related to this election and over 3,000 cases of reported crime against party facilities, election posters and party representatives in 2024 (Statista 2025). Women politicians, especially those of migrant origin and queer candidates, were particularly targeted through derogatory and sexualized online content, manipulative or AI-generated posts, and disinformation campaigns, often featuring threats of sexual character (OSCE 2025).

Due to a technical error, a number of postal voters in seven districts in Berlin and North-Rhein Westfalen received two ballots instead of one. The relevant authorities quickly fixed the error by invalidating one of the ballots (ODHIR 2025). 

Despite the winter conditions, voter turnout rate went up significantly—from 76.58 per cent (in 2021) to  82.54 per cent (International IDEA n.d.), the highest since Germany’s reunification.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the most seats with 28.6 per cent. The AfD saw the most gains with 20.8 per cent, a +10.4 per cent gain from the last elections. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens saw losses at -9.3 per cent and -3.1 per cent, respectively. The Free Democratic Party saw losses of -7.1 per cent and at 4.4 per cent of the vote, failed to meet the threshold for holding any seats in parliament (DW n.d.). 

Innovations

In 2023, a new electoral law limited the size of the parliament to a maximum of 630 (previously at 733). Prior, the Bundestag had an overhang clause giving parties that win more seats in the first vote (vote for candidate) than the second vote (vote for party) extra seats. The clause had played a role in equalizing the proportionality of the Bundestag (Jones 2025).  23 candidates who won in their districts in 2025 did not gain seats in parliament as a result of this change, 18 of whom were from the traditional right-wing parties (CDU and CSU) (OSCE/ODIHR 2025).

In 2024 Germany had also amended campaign financing laws. The reform added regulations on third party campaigning and the separate reporting of sponsorship, and lowered the threshold for immediate reporting of donations from 50,000 to 35,000 EUR (OSCE/ODIHR 2025).