Talk:2025 German federal election

Retirements

More retirements include Marco Wanderwitz and Albrecht Glaser. https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/wanderwitz-bundestag-rueckzug-100.html https://www.zeit.de/news/2024-09/07/jan-nolte-ist-afd-spitzenkandidat-fuer-bundestagswahl-demos JFM01 (talk) 17:57, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I listed a number of outgoing MPs in this section on Jan 15, yet they were simply deleted from the discussion page and not added to the list. JFM01 (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

The AfD has no path to enter government as no other parties are willing to work with it?

"The AfD has no path to enter government as no other parties are willing to work with it" Sounds a bit rough, they do not have a way to "enter government" just because nobody else is willing to work with them? Jjbomb (talk) 23:30, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

I mean, anyone can win an absolute majority, which has happened once (1957) and realistically never will again, so not even worth discussing as a possibility. All other parties are on the record that they will not form a coalition including them so that is a correct claim to make. Xenon54 (talk) 16:49, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

no it is not a correct claim to make, it specifically says "no path to enter government", if they win the election, they enter the government, it's a wrong use of words, which is what im trying to say, makes it sound worse, better say they wont form a coalition Jjbomb (talk) 21:28, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

If they win the election they enter the government? Not what happened in the 2024 Thuringian state election. I agree that we should avoid categorically stating that AfD has "no path" to enter government because weird shit happens many times in politics, but it is indeed fairly unlikely as of now and there is nothing wrong in the article reflecting that (as long as reliable sources exist to support the claim). Impru20^talk 21:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Goofball, that is a state election, this is a FEDERAL election Jjbomb (talk) 05:16, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it's appropriate to use and hominems like "goofball", ever. Impru20's point is valid, that with a plurality of votes, AfD could still have been the opposition if other parties formed a majority. Unknown Temptation (talk) 16:15, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

The conclusion is correct, but I would probably phrase it differently as I think it sounds unencyclopedic. The terms used by the citations are "no prospect" and "its chances [...] are slim". I would probably phrase it like that. Perhaps "Because other parties refuse to work with it, its chances of entering government are seen as unlikely". Gust Justice (talk) 23:48, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Electoral System and seat allocation

This is very unclear as of Feb. 10th. I've tried translating German descriptions to no clear end.

Scenario: CSU will likely get around 5% of second vote -- proportionally just over 30 seats. Yet, they'll lead in over 40 constituencies or more in Bavaria -- even on the second vote, given history. Or, more appropriately, the Party will be way over-shared in Bavaria. In this election, this will likely impact most of the leading parties, in some way.

How does the allocation work breaking it down from Federal to state? What is 100% for the share-back -- all voters?, Party voters? other?

Do Constituency winners (first vote) get priority? Are they automatically on whatever these State Lists are -- which are not identified in the description?

Why doesn't it say -- even on German gov't sites -- that a Constituency winner is not guaranteed a seat? I'd be curious how public knowledge of that -- given 4 of 5 German I know gave me a confused look. 174.127.159.17 (talk) 22:02, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

The text could perhaps be a bit more clear, since it is currently structured to first explain the basics of how the system works (and also worked prior to the reform), and then subsequently explains the reform. Ideally there would be a longer article for the 2023 electoral reform, which would explain it in more detail (or perhaps as a section on Electoral system of Germany). The fact that the Federal Constitutional Court reintroduced the constituency rule in its ruling doesn't make it simpler.

I think the text in the article does explain things sufficiently, given that it is written in summary style. To answer your question, the principle of second vote coverage would mean that the CSU's proportional allocation takes precedence. If it wins a plurality of the vote in 47 constituencies, but proportionally is only entitled to 40 seats, it will only win 40 seats.

This sentence here explains the seat allocation from the federal level to the state level:

Initially, seats are allocated proportionally at the federal level to parties clearing the threshold, then subsequently within each party to its state lists within each state. Both calculations are done using the Webster/Sainte-Laguë method.

The phrasing might not be perfect, but this essentially describes the fact that the 630 seats are first distributed among parties clearing the threshold, based on its national vote totals and using Sainte-Laguë's method. Then for each party, a similar proportional distribution of that party's seats is done between the different states, based on the number of votes the party got in each state. Essentially this means that the distribution from the national level to the state level isn't done through one single calculation, but a separate one for each party.

Constituency winners do get priority when it comes to the seats allocated to each party's state list. This is essentially what section 6(1) of the electoral law says. Confusingly, the term state list (Landeslite) is used in the law, even though a constituency candidate does not have to be on a party's actual list. I used the term state list on this article because it's unclear what the terminology otherwise would be.

The reason why the website of the German government website doesn't say that a constituency winner isn't guarenteed a seat, is likely because said page is outdated. Gust Justice (talk) 22:21, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

So your reply helps -- I'm offering this to replace your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs within Electoral System. You may add or just ignore this suggestion. Sorry if I get labels wrong. Questions are in caps:

text to replace: "Initially, seats are allocated proportionally at the federal level to parties clearing the threshold, then subsequently within each party to its state lists within each state. Both calculations are done using the Webster/Sainte-Laguë method. The number of constituencies each party wins in each state are subtracted from its allocation to arrive at the final number of list seats.

Independent candidates are elected if they receive a plurality of the vote in their constituency. The second votes of ballots on which a winning independent candidate is the first vote are not taken into account in order to preserve voter equality."

suggested text: "These duel votes adds to complexity for entry into the Bundestag. Importantly in 2025, only Independent candidates who win their Constituency vote (first vote) are guaranteed to enter the Bundestag. All party candidates must be among those parties passing the threshold (noted above) with available derived seats from the second vote (identified below). As well, for any constituency won by an Independent, second votes for any party on those ballots are not included in the receiving party's total. [DOES THIS IMPACT THE FEDERAL THRESHOLD??] The implication to opinion polls and the election night exit poll is minimal as long as there are few Independent candidates. However, the impact becomes less clear if more Independents were to win their first vote -- say, more than five constituencies in various scenarios.

Party candidates are then assigned seats by a two step calculation.

STEP ONE, does the party pass the required threshold. If so, the party's derived seats (see calculation method below) are shared out to states based its own nationwide vote share. Meaning, if a party wins 5% of the vote, roughly 31 seats of 630 total seats, and within that 50% comes from a specific state, then roughly 15 seats will be assigned to that state (and so on among other states).

STEP TWO, a party's available seats are assigned first based on Constituency winners (first vote). If more allocated seats are available compared to first vote winners, then the party's State List is used to select candidates. [IS THERE A PARTY-DETERMINED ORDER TO THIS LIST??] [WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THERE ARE MORE FIRST VOTE WINNERS THAN AVAILABLE SEATS??]

Yes, the state party conventions determine the order of their lists, electing their leaders at number 1 - or more precisely, decide behind closed doors who will be elected by the delegates who then give standing ovations for 10+ minutes like in communist countries (where Angela Merkel came from). According to polls, the top ranks are considered "safe", while too low ones are considered worthless. If a party dominates a state, like CSU does in Bavaria, their list is more or less pointless, "saving" only few or no candidates at all. In that case, similar to the US and the UK, only constituencies winners will win seats, and leaders of successful parties who happen to run in "wrong" places are at risk to fail. On the other hand, politicians of lesser parties have a nearly fail-safe way into the parliament, guaranteed by their party primaries. Some don't bother to run in any place, just show up on national television on a seemingly daily basis. Go figure. 2003:C6:370D:F125:29EE:F267:774F:C4B5 (talk) 16:40, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

The calculation method in both steps is the Webster/Sainte-Laguë method. This allocates whole seats from fractional vote shares, among other methods. 174.127.159.17 (talk) 17:47, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

I have tried to address the questions you are mentioning. When it comes to the question of what happens if there are more candidates getting a plurality, than the party is set to win seats in a state, this is addressed by the 2023 reform section. Gust Justice (talk) 20:43, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

I understand most of it now, thank you. Just some follow-up questions:

1) are parties required to submit lists of a certain size? if not, what happens when their vote share entitles them to more seats than the list includes? Are these lists submitted and finalized prior to the election?

2) what is the order by which first vote winners are assigned seats? this is only for those situations where the second vote share seat allocation is smaller than first vote leading constituencies. [i believe i read this is by first vote ranking but it could be the party's second vote by constituency]

Please ignore if these are answered. I'm trying to understand the process -- not trying to make you jump through hoops! 174.127.159.17 (talk) 20:17, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

1. As far as I can tell, there is no minimum number of candidates a party must have on its state list. If a party in a state wins more seats than it has candidates on its list, those seats are left vacant. This is the only way the number of MPs elected to the Bundestag may be less than 630. This however is very unlikely as all major parties include more than enough candidates to prevent its list from being exhausted like this. The deadline for submitting the lists is normally 58 days before the election; this deadline has been shortened due to the election happening earlier than planned and with a shorter timeframe than normal.
2. Candidates getting a plurality of the vote are, within their party, ranked by the first vote vote share in their respective constituency. I.e. their personal number of votes divided by the total number of votes cast for all constituency candidates in that constituency.

Gust Justice (talk) 02:48, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me that how many constituency are in German Election 2025 276 or 299? Thinktankresearch (talk) 10:57, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

There are 299 constituencies, but the number of candidates elected from constituencies is not guarenteed to be equal to 299, since a candidate needs second vote coverage to be elected. As such, the number of MPs elected through their constituency result is 276. Gust Justice (talk) 11:00, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Isn't in every constituency candidates contested?

then what about 299 - 276 rest of constituencies? how representation will be done in Bundestag of remaining constituencies?

Why there is not every fix? fluid unclear uncertain. Normal person can asses the election

from many days I am trying to understand German election system but failing Thinktankresearch (talk) 13:35, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Nationwide, about 4 constituencies are not represented by any candidate at all. The winner was among the 23 that missed out, and none of the others were elected via a party state list. The state capital Stuttgart has two world-famous automobile companies, and is represented only by two anti-automobile and anti-industry party candidates, from Greens and Left (communists). The somewhat conservative CDU won in No. II, but it remains "empty" completely. In No. I, 5 votes decided the winner between Greens and CDU. If the CDU candidate would have "won", she would not have won a seat either, and the whole city would have represented only by a list candidate of a communist party with less than 9% popularity. So at least, there is a second seat, held by a Green, with some 12% popularity. The 28% and 20% parties have no chance to win in urban districts as they have too many winners in rural areas. Go figure. 2003:C6:370D:F125:29EE:F267:774F:C4B5 (talk) 16:40, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Exit polls

Do not add exit poll projections to the infobox as if they are actual results. They are not, and it is very misleading to claim that they are results FriendlyDataNerdV2 (talk) 18:00, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I totally agree, this would misleading for those who (are probably outside of Germany and) don't have the timeline about announcement of results in mind. Damghani 18:19, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah the infobox format is not suitable for adding exit polls on their own. For that to be possible, it would need to be possible to make it clear to viewers that it is only an exit poll. Gust Justice (talk) 18:39, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Results

Winning a constituency does not equal winning a seat. Seats are allocated after all second votes are counted. There are only 299 constituencies vs 630 seats. Timetorockknowlege (talk) 20:36, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah this needs to be taken into account. Gust Justice (talk) 22:55, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Winning a constituency guarantees a seat. What is not guaranteed, are the remaining candidates within each party's state list, as those corresponding to second vote count (excluding the constituency seats). ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:04, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

No, winning a constituency does not guarantee a seat anymore. 23 winners missed out. 2003:C6:370D:F125:29EE:F267:774F:C4B5 (talk) 16:05, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Include BSW in the infobox if below 5%

Seeking opinions/thoughts on what to do here. If BSW drops below 5% - which is the more likely result at the time of writing - should they be included in the infobox? This is a party that didn't exist in the previous election and (potentially) will have gained no seats in this election. I believe this means it SHOULDN'T be added but I'd like to reach a consensus here. Thoughts? Spaastm (talk) 22:10, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Thoughts? @FriendlyDataNerdV2 , @Timetorockknowlege, @Damghani, @Gust Justice Spaastm (talk) 22:21, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I was going to argue to not include them but on second thought I think they should be included if they don't get the 5% margin to show their seats declining from 10 to 0. I'd argue the consensus should be to include any party that has a shift in seats even if its a shift to 0 seats such as the FDP. However if a party goes from 0 seats to still having 0 seats such as the Free Voters for example, they should not be included.

Timetorockknowlege (talk) 22:30, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Hmm... I think this would mean we'd have to include parties like Bündnis Deutschland or WerteUnion since they both had 1 seat each at dissolution (from party switches during the 20th Bundestag). I'm leaning towards not including BSW but it's tricky and I'd like to hear more opinions before we make a final decision. Spaastm (talk) 22:36, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I would include them and FDP, but it seems they both got 0 seats. A section explaining this (as the law updated recently) would help too. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:38, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

FDP is different. It should be included because it ran in the last election. BSW didn't exist. Notice that even the official results page is merging the BSW results under "Sonstige" ("Others"). I suppose this will change if they get 5% or above: https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/bundestagswahlen/2025/ergebnisse/bund-99.html Spaastm (talk) 22:39, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

10 seats is much more significant than just a single seat + those other parties are gaining less than 1% of the vote while the BSW is extremely close to 5%, as of right now its 4.9% Timetorockknowlege (talk) 23:08, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Understood but look at the 2021 election infobox. The seat change difference is not based on the number of seats at dissolution. It's based on the number of seats compared to the previous election. There will be nothing to compare the BSW change against because the party did not exist in the 2021 election. I increasingly see no reason to include BSW in the infobox as long as they don't reach 5%. My vote is to NOT INCLUDE BSW (but do include FDP). Spaastm (talk) 23:24, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree, even if the BSW electorally hasn't won any seats, going in they still had a notable amount, and very likely had an effect on Die Linke's performance V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 23:24, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I would say include it, at least for the time being, given that no matter what it will be really close. The full discussion is premature since we don't yet know the full result. Gust Justice (talk) 22:55, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree it should be included for now but it should be excluded if they don't get seats. The seat change is based on previous election, not based on seats at dissolution. There is nothing to compare the (likely) 0 BSW seats against because they didn't exist in 2021. I do not think it should be included if it fails to reach 5%. Spaastm (talk) 23:27, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

• They (and the FDP) should be excluded if they fail to win a seat, but included if they do IMO. Number 57 23:09, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  The FDP should absolutely be included regardless. They were in the last governing coalition and had 91 seats. To show their share declining to 0 needs to be shown so at a glance people can understand where all the AfD and Union seats came from. Also, this goes with precedent as in the 2013 election the FDP had 93 seats and lost them all in a similar situation and that was represented in the infobox. FDP being shown shouldn't even be a debate. Timetorockknowlege (talk) 23:18, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  FDP should be included regardless, BSW should only be included if they get to 5%. The seat change in the infobox is calculated based on the seats in the previous election. If it's a new party, the seat change is set to "New party". If the party gets 0 seats, what are we comparing against? It doesn't make sense to include a party that didn't run in the previous election and failed to gain seats in this one. Spaastm (talk) 23:30, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I would say include the BSW if they get the 5% threshold, and have the FDP in the infobox no matter what. Pikachubob3 (talk) 23:58, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

We are still going back on forward on this so should we open a RFC and confirm a consensus? Pikachubob3 (talk) 23:32, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

There appears to be some edit-warring right now regarding FDP's place in the infobox. For the record, I think it should be there because they had seats the last election. Pretty sure that's the consensus already? As far is BSW goes, they are going from zero seats to zero seats. There isn't a pressing need to depict that in the infobox. TheSavageNorwegian 01:07, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed Pikachubob3 (talk) 01:11, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

This is incorrect. They are going from 10 seats to 0 if we are including parties that had seats they are included. Emac07 (talk) 01:13, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Ohh yeah they did have 10 seats before the election Pikachubob3 (talk) 01:16, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Zero seats at last election, sorry, which is what the infobox depicts. Some (much less busy) infoboxes depict both seats last election, seats before election, and seats elected. We need a strong consensus to change towards that, since it's already so information-dense. TheSavageNorwegian 01:23, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

The seat change is done compared to the previous election, not the seats at dissolution. They are going from 0 to 0 as Norwegian said. BSW should not be included. Spaastm (talk) 01:24, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

It should be added, we have SSW added even though they only have 1 seat, and we have the FDP added after losing all there seats and winning a smaller percentage than the BSW. BSW should be added to the infobox. Completely Random Guy (talk) 01:22, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

FDP is there so people can see where seats have come from Pikachubob3 (talk) 01:24, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

FDP ran in the last election and now lost all the seats. SSW runs in only one state - should not be included. BSW didn't exist in 2021 and gained 0 seats, therefore going from N/A to 0 seats from one election to the other. It should not be included. Spaastm (talk) 01:25, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I just don’t see how it’s justifiable to have only the FDP in the election box when they received less votes in this election than BSW, regardless of their greater significance last time 2607:FEA8:51F:B980:25ED:4B59:3CCF:97D3 (talk) 01:35, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I see your point, however, BSW had zero seats last election and zero now. There are many things we could depict in the infobox but choose not to for brevity. If more people are of your opinion we can have an RFC about it and change it. Consensus can certainly change. I am slightly on the fence about it, but I land on the side of established consensus (and wanting a tidy, easy-to-understand infobox) TheSavageNorwegian 01:48, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

SSW won one seat at the last election, they are not depicted in the infobox. I'm entirely comfortable with that consensus standing, this is different than a party fielding candidates nationwide. TheSavageNorwegian 01:32, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. FDP should be included because it ran in the last election even if it lost all its seats in this one. BSW should not be included because it didn't exist in the previous election and didn't gain seats now. SSW should not be included because it's not included in 2021 and also only runs in one state. Plus you get the added "aesthetic" bonus of having six parties in the infobox - the same six as in 2021. I think this is the correct decision and it should be the final decision too. Spaastm (talk) 01:35, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I disagree. Even if they didn't have those 10 seats last election their share in parliament is still declining. Its obvious from the infobox the weren't in the last election as it says "Did not exist" under last election. But their seat number in the Bundestag of 10 seats and them coming extremely close to the 5% I believe gives them the right to be in the infobox. Timetorockknowlege (talk) 04:00, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree I think they’re too significant of a party to not be included. We needn’t be so legalistic about it. The average person going to the page likely has some interest in the party since they have played a significant part in prior elections. Parties that hold 1 seat are not relevant enough to justify inclusion. The point of a wiki page is to display relevant information that the average person is looking for. Yes precedent is a good guide for most things but this is a case where strict adherence to precedent is harming the page. 49.199.199.59 (talk) 04:51, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that the BSW should be included in the infobox. Even if they came slightly short of winning seats they are still a major party. Most importantly they got more votes then the FDP, it doesn't make sense to include one but not the other. They also have 5 seats in the Bundesrat, showing their major influence. Throughout the entire election they were treated like a major party, thats why it was included in the infobox during the campaign. They were part of election debates and polling, unlike the other 2 small parties that gained seats after the 2021 election. If the SSW was treated as a major party by the media I would support them being included as well despite them only running in one state. But that's a different point. Regardless of if the BSW end up gaining seats they played a major role in this election and should be included. I also think the "seats before" line should be added back. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 05:06, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

2025 German federal election

23 February 2025
All 630 seats in the Bundestag 316 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered	60,490,603
Turnout	82.5% ( 6.2pp)
First party Second party Third party   Candidate Friedrich Merz Alice Weidel Olaf Scholz Party CDU/CSU AfD SPD Last election 24.1%, 197 seats 10.4%, 83 seats 25.7%, 206 seats Seats before 196 76 207 Seats won 208 152 120 Seat change 11 69 86 Popular vote 14,158,432 10,327,148 8,148,284 Percentage 28.5% 20.8% 16.4% Swing 4.4 pp 10.3 pp 9.3 pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Candidate Robert Habeck Jan van Aken & Heidi Reichinnek Stefan Seidler Party Greens Left SSW Last election 14.7%, 118 seats 4.9%, 39 seats 0.12%, 1 seat Seats before 117 28 1 Seats won 85 64 1 Seat change 33 25 Popular vote 5,761,476 4,355,382 76,126 Percentage 11.6% 8.8% 0.15% Swing 3.1 pp 3.9 pp 0.03 pp   Seventh party Eighth party   Candidate Sahra Wagenknecht Christian Lindner Party BSW FDP Last election Did not exist 11.4%, 91 seats Seats before 10 89 Seats won 0 0 Seat change 10 91 Popular vote 2,468,670 2,148,878 Percentage 4.9% 4.3% Swing 4.9 pp 7.1 pp
The Bundestag constituencies to be used at the election
Government before election Scholz cabinet SPD–Green Government after election TBD

I support including both SSW and BSW. All major parties, and all parties with seats. Reason: FDP has to be included to show the drop, but infoboxes generally don't show parties with 1 seat whilst omitting parties with 0 seats, which implies SSW's inclusion too, and if so then there's no point in excluding BSW which got more votes than FDP. That way the first two lines would be all the parties with seats, and the ones without (BSW, FDP) on the third line. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 05:42, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm a bit on the fence about including the SSW because they weren't included in debates or much media coverage. I don't oppose it, but think we should have a separate discussion on that after agreeing to add back the BSW. I think this infobox looks good and makes sense. However I would put the SSW at the end. Aka list them in order of votes received rather then seats. I don't know if that's the standard, but it just makes more sense to me. But we also have to decide if we want to add the SSW to the 2021 election infobox, when there was very limited talk about the party during that election even after they won a seat. We would need to include a note that they are exempt from the 5% threshold. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 06:12, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

There is a general consensus that in infoboxes, parties are always arranged by number of seats, with parties with more seats coming ahead of parties with fewer- which means that if we're including parties with zero seats, all parties with seats should come before them.

It would be possible to break with that standard if there's a good reason to do so, of course, but in this case I don't really think there's a need. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 06:27, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Ok that makes sense. I'd be in favour of adding this infobox. The one thing is the BSW says -10 seats, so based on dissolution, but FDP says -91, so based on last election. We'd need to be consistent. I personally don't have a preference which number we use for that part. But the standard for other countries like Canada is dissolution. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 06:54, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this point. If we will add the seats before line we must decide whether the seat change will use it or last election. If we decide on adding the BSW then it only makes sense to use the seats before otherwise there's not really a point in adding the BSW. if we don't add them then we should keep the comparison to last election and just not add the seats before line. Timetorockknowlege (talk) 07:30, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I oppose including the SSW. They are a regionalist party that only runs in a single state in hopes of gaining a single seat to represent the Danish minority. They have 0 impact whatsoever on the entire nation or coalition talks. Meanwhile the BSW probably cost both the Left and the AfD a decent amount of votes, ran across the country, had a decent chunk of seats (10) and almost met the 5% threshold which could've forced the Union to have an undesirable 3 party coalition. Timetorockknowlege (talk) 07:28, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

What matters in an election is winning seats. Nearly all election article infoboxes include only parties that won seats. (There are some exceptions, particularly for Canada.) Most infoboxes include all parties that won seats, although there is some variation and the smallest parties are sometimes excluded. I thus oppose including BSW and the FDP. I'm neutral on whether to include SSW. Whoever we include, all infoboxes order parties by number of seats won, so if including SSW and BSW, then SSW comes before BSW, and we can't include BSW while excluding SSW. Bondegezou (talk) 15:20, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

The FDP was depicted in the 2013 German federal election despite losing all its seats. We have precedent to depict them, as they won a large number of seats in the prior election. River10000 (talk) 16:38, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed with Chessrat on this one. BSW is treated as a major party throughout the election and only barely fell short of the 5% mark (BSW stood at 4.97% to be exact), having more votes than both the FDP and SSW. Importantly, both BSW and FDP had parliamentary groups prior to the election.

The solution here is to either exclude all three, or include all three - and given that the FDP was in government after the 2021 election, the only option is to include SSW, BSW, and FDP. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 16:50, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't agree on there being a binary in regard to these 3 parties, mainly I disagree on including the SSW, which is a largely irrelevant party, aiming to hold their single seat, compared to the BSW and FDP, which are both represented nationally V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 19:18, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

100% oppose including the FDP, BSW, and SSW. Infoboxes are for briefly informing readers the top-lines of the election, not an all-encompassing results table (which is already included in the body). I can't think of another election which shows a party in the infobox which didn't win a single seat. BSW is even in a worse position than the FDP as they did not win seats in the last election, so showing seat change 0 to 0 is needless information. Oppose showing SSW for the same reasons as the last election. We do not need to include every party which won seats, common in other European elections, especially for a regionalist party which only fields a candidate in one area. Yeoutie (talk) 16:54, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

In addition, not only have I never seen on Wikipedia a party included in the infobox which won zero seats, the 'seats before' line has only ever been used pre-election in my experience. Cluttering the infobox is not the answer to include certain parties. Yeoutie (talk) 16:59, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

At this point I support including all the parties mentioned, (FDP BSW and SSW). FDP and BSW both were treated as major parties and had a large number of seats before they election. They were both recognized as parliamentary groups and included in debates. The SSW won seats the last 2 elections in a row. The German language page seems to be including them (And also the Free Voters, but I don't think we need them as they played a minor roll this election). It doesn't seem that cluttered to me, and it provides easy access to information, with more detail included later on. We need to have the seats before line. It shows trends before the election and shows the strength of the BSW. It works well in Canada. I think that this is becoming the majority opinion. For sure FDP should be included given precedent and their historical position, and since the BSW got more votes if the FDP is included the BSW must be too. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 19:04, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

As has been said above, the FDP lost all their seats in the 2013 federal election, but were still included, so there is precedent for this exact scenario V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 19:05, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

These exceptions are interesting, thanks for brining them to our attention. First of all. it's just baffling to me to even think about including a party which won nothing in what is meant to be a quick summary of results. Secondly, I did find it interesting that Canada appears to me to be the only country in all of the wiki to include the 'seats before' in all of their elections, along with a few others such as one or two of the UK's and the most recent three US House elections. So I do admit it wasn't quite as rare as I thought, but nonetheless still rare. I would still caution editors for putting in the 'seats before' just to justify the BSW's inclusion, when no other german election has necessitated it. Third, I would defer to some editors back in 2021 who brought up the similar situation the SSW and the UK's small regional parties find themselves in in respect to the infobox, and why inclusion is not necessary for again, this summary of important results. Yeoutie (talk) 22:46, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

From reading this I am getting the vibe that overall we are leaning towards including the BSW. Can we have a vote on this to finally decide it. I am 100% in favour of including the BSW and FDP, and 75% in favour of including the SSW. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 22:33, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree that we should hold a vote or an RFC Pikachubob3 (talk) 23:19, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree as well. Timetorockknowlege (talk) 00:05, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I also support starting an RfC, I'm just wondering if we should include either the FDP, SSW, or both, for comment, given the disscusion that has been about them V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 01:05, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I would say the options should be

1. Only parties with seats (Die Linke, SPD, Greens, CDU\CSU, AFD)

2. Option 1 + FDP

3. Option 1 + FDP + BSW

4. Option 1 + FDP + BSW + SSW Pikachubob3 (talk) 01:10, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I have started an RfC V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 07:27, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Last election

Now that 23 February 2025 was the actual last federal election, some of wording on Wikipedia page is confusing, yet people are going to Wikipedia for updates. I will try change it to 2021 election, or actually update the data where useful. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 09:36, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Okay I am quite confused. It appears last election is consistently used to refer to "2nd last election", but if a reasonable editor like me can be confused, I can imagine others as well. Any strong opinions against using the numeric year? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:02, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Results table

It looks like the primary criteria for the order of entries is party list vote total. If so, several of the minor parties at the bottom end (below 1% of the vote) seem at the moment to be listed out of order - Volt should be above everything except Human Environment Animal Protection Party for instance, and the several parties with three figure totals should obviously be right at the end. 10:32, 24 February 2025 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8012:227B:0:A00E:2856:F4D0:109F (talk)

Results map

I appreciate the work that has gone into the present version but I think it would be more appropriate to use the second vote results to show most supported party in each area. We know that tactical voting and smaller parties not fielding candidates distorts party support in the first vote figures. 86.157.203.217 (talk) 19:05, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I disagree. We show both later on which is good. Constituencies only matter for the first vote. So if we have the constituency results in the infobox, then its the constituency vote. Tactical voting is irrelevant to the map, but might make an interesting section of the article later on because the discrepancy between the first and second vote this election is much greater than usual. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 23:39, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

On some level you are correct. The second vote is far and away the vote type that matters the most. But this format is what is used on other articles and when German media shows election maps, it is most frequently of what party has the first vote plurality. As @Politicsenthusiast06 points out, the geographic distribution of second votes within a state has no impact on the overall seat distribution. A second vote cast in Würzburg will have the exact same impact as one cast in Munich (discounting the practically irrelevant provision for if an independent candidate wins a seat). Overall I would say that the two different plurality maps are similar enough that including the first vote plurality map in the infobox is fine. It manages to summarize the result of the election in an appropriate way. Gust Justice (talk) 10:58, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

When is the new Bundestag seated?

I think the edits on German party articles that placed the number of seats won in yesterday's election in the infobox are premature.

According to this article: [1], the previous Bundestag wasn't seated until a month after its election.

Thoughts? David O. Johnson (talk) 20:39, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Grundgesetz 39(1) and 39(2): the term of a Bundestag ends at the konstituierende Sitzung (initial session, I do not know an equivalent English term for this) of the new Bundestag, which must happen within 30 days of an election. Since it hasn't yet, I agree with you. Xenon54 (talk) 20:55, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I think at latest the date is 25 March (30th day after the election), but it can be called earlier by the outgoing Bundestag President. Since this hasn't happened yet, the outgoing seat totals is still what matters on the articles of political parties and of politicians. FDP for example still has 90 seats. It only loses representation once the new Bundestag convenes. Gust Justice (talk) 21:16, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

There's reporting from the New York Times today about Merz legislating during the lame duck session. Here's the quote that's relevant: "He set a March 24 deadline for those talks, the last day the old Parliament would be active."TheSavageNorwegian 22:14, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate it. David O. Johnson (talk) 00:28, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

References

Electorate/Demographic data?

I don't really contribute to wikipedia much but given similar election pages in the UK and France contain electorate data then surely the available data for this one should be used too?

https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-results-and-voter-demographics-explained-in-charts/a-71724186 Zexal42 (talk) 21:29, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

The Linke/ Die Linke?

I'm just wondering why we are going with the Linke instead of Die Linke and sometimes even just the left Pikachubob3 (talk) 02:40, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

"Die Linke" is only used five times in prose. I didn't see any instances of it being called "the Linke." David O. Johnson (talk) 02:50, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

RfC: Inclusion of FDP, BSW, and SSW

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Despite initial votes for Option B following FDP's notability and precedence from the 2013 election, strong policy-based objections regarding WP:NPOV gained momentum as the discussion took place. Arguments that Option B unfairly excluded BSW (most votes) and SSW (a seat winner), and misrepresented FDP's placement, were compelling among many users.

Options A and E, while consistent with a literal interpretation of seat-based inclusion and some international standards, did not satisfy the desire expressed by many editors to reflect the electoral significance and notable results of the FDP and BSW. Option C balanced the FDP/BSW vote comparison but once more failed to make up for the SSW's seat. While concerns regarding potential clutter (WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE) and exceeding strict norms of other countries (WP:LOCALCONSENSUS) were voiced regarding Option D, they were overshadowed by the large-scale opposition to the NPOV issues inherent in Option B and the desire to reflect the specific dynamics of this election comprehensively.

Based on the arguments presented by both sides, there is consensus for Option D: Include the FDP, BSW, and SSW in the infobox. This option best addresses the unique circumstances of this election and accommodates the different valid criteria for inclusion raised. Feeglgeef (talk) 01:31, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

---

There has been discussion, intially over whether to include the BSW in the infobox, that has since grown to encompass the inclusion the FDP and SSW.

Should we:

1. Exclude all three
   
2. Include only the FDP
   
3. Include the FDP and BSW
   
4. Include the FDP, BSW, and SSW
   
5. Include the SSW, but not either the BSW or FDP

V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 07:24, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

The reason for this discussion was whether FDP, BSW, despite not reaching the electoral threshold, and the SSW, being exempted for the threshold and winning a seat, due to representing ethnic minorities, are important enough to include. The arguments in favour of the FDP seem to be that they were important enough historically significant to be included and a similar situation in the 2013 election infobox where they were included. The arguments in favour of including the BSW also focus on their significance, having 10 seats going into the election, and just barely missing the 5% threshold. The main argument against both is that they won no seats and as such shouldn’t be included, and, for the BSW being a smaller and less relevant party, that hadn’t participated in a previous federal election. The arguments around the meanwhile SSW are over whether their single seat is worthy of inclusion.

With that being said, I am personally in favour of option C, due to the reasons mentioned above. I also feel it’s important to note that the SSW wasn’t included in the infobox for the 2021 election, despite it being when they won their seat. V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 07:26, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

We've had this discussion at length under "Include BSW in the infobox if below 5%" with a pretty clear consensus on B, a consensus I don't really see changing. You seem to want to include the BSW, but remember that they didn't exist in 2021 and their 10 seats going in the election were essentially poached from Die Linke. It would also look odd to include them in the infobox; "no change", "new", "pre-creation", a third row – I don't think there's a compelling enough reason, like them winning seats, that warrants that mess. There's a history of this as well: For the 1990 infobox, the DSU was excluded despite going into the election with 8 seats if I remember correctly. Additionally, the FDP is a "legacy party" of sorts, a party that has run in German elections since 1949, whereas the BSW has a resonably high chance of dissolving before the next election. The SSW's inclusion has been denied repeatedly for the last election for reasons obvious: Not even 0,01 % of the vote, just a quirk of German election rules really. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 07:35, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I opened an RfC because I personally couldn't a consensus and saw some other people calling for one, also I don't think it's of much concern, especially if you think it'll just turn out to be the status quo V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 10:36, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

• B Shadow4dark (talk) 07:43, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
• As explained previously under the same discussion, I do believe there exists a binary between all three and none of them. Thus, D and A both have my vote. With that said I am amenable to C due to SSW being a minority party and thus arguably nationally irrelevant.
  A runs into the issue of not being able to show the extent of how the FDP fell, and of BSW's treatment as a major party throughout the campaign, but is a necessary tradeoff if we are to include only the major in-Bundestag parties.
  I oppose E as an inclusion of SSW without FDP or BSW is undue. I entirely reject B as it directly violates WP:NPOV by excluding a party that only fell short by 0.03% but keeping in one that fell short by 0.67%.
  Know that it's not a !vote, but my preference is D>A≥C>>>>E>>>>B. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 07:48, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  B doesn't give undue weight to the FDP and thus doesn't violate WP:NPOV because the BSW hadn't won any seats to begin with. They amount they fell short by is irrelevant, if you miss, you miss. D is a recipe for maximum clutter. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 07:54, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  We will have to agree to disagree. Clutter inevitably will have to happen when 7 or more parties participate. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 07:59, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

• B The FDP should be there to show where all the seats came from Pikachubob3 (talk) 10:35, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

2022 Latvian parliamentary election, 2022 Slovenian parliamentary election, 2024 Icelandic parliamentary election and multiple other election articles, faced with the same problem, did not include parties that crashed out of their parliaments. They don't feel the need to show where all the seats came from. I see no reason why Germany should be different. Bondegezou (talk) 13:30, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

• B Is the only approach consistent with previous articles. The FDP being shown, but BSW excluded is also how the FDP and AfD respectively are treated in the 2013 article. It is also consistent with how the Federal Returning Officer depicts the results. On that official website, the BSW is grouped under others due to not currently having parliamentary representation, nor obtaining it. As for the SSW, if we are going to include the party in the 2025 article, there would be no good reason not to include it in 2021, other than the view that the infobox looks bad if it has exactly 7 parties. I think its exclusion from the infobox is justified, given that it has nowhere near the number of MPs required to form a party group (32 seats), and only got 0.2% of the vote. The fact that you can't know the full distribution of seats from the infobox, and have to scroll down to know that SSW won one seat, is something we have to live with. Gust Justice (talk) 12:21, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

B is not consistent with numerous non-German election articles. It is inconsistent with them. Bondegezou (talk) 13:32, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

It is consistent with German election articles. Are you suggesting there should be a Wikipedia-wide effort to standardize how all infoboxes are presented? I am looking forward to seeing your edits on every single German election (federal, state, etc.) to change it from B, which as Gust Justice pointed out is the only approach consistent with previous German election articles. Spaastm (talk) 19:04, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

The AfD got less votes then the FDP in 2013, unlike the BSW that got more votes then the FDP in 2024, so again no option B is not consistent with other German election articles. And frankly including the FDP in 2013 wasn't either, but there was more justification given that they were actually in government at the time and were actually the 5th place party so having them in 5th on the infobox wasn't misleading. etc Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 21:14, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

It is, as others like Politicsenthusiast06 have pointed out, incorrect to say that B is the only approach consistent with previous German election articles. No other German election article has included a party while excluding a party with more seats or a party with the same number of seats but more votes. To answer your specific point, Are you suggesting there should be a Wikipedia-wide effort to standardize how all infoboxes are presented? Yes, there should be some consistency. This is an infobox used on a large number of elections. Readers will expect it to work in broadly similar ways across different articles. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS warns against local consensuses. The consistency I'm arguing for is pretty simple: a party should usually be shown 7th in an infobox only if it actually came 7th in the election. Bondegezou (talk) 10:22, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option B FDP had seats prior to the election that it won in the last election and lost all of them. BSW only had seats from people who had changed their prior membership, and didn't win any either, so it would be reasonable to exclude it. I don't know about SSW, since it's a small regional party.Mgasparin (talk) 09:33, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
• The real problem here is that multi-party elections should use {{Infobox legislative election}} over {{Infobox election}} which is designed with US-centrism. As times moves on, we stray further and further away from WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE because some people think this looks cool, and then run into disputes about what to include in it and what not to. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 11:37, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  Because of the US-like Chancellor's race and the pretty long three-party run in West Germany, {{Infobox election} still makes sense. And it looks way better. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 12:45, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  FDP, AFD and Grune have been decently large parties for quite a long time now. Even Linke is winning a large chunk now. Times have changed and it should be accepted. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 15:27, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  I can't say I agree with that. "Looking cool" is a key feature here. You can process information much better if it's presented in a visually-friendly way. We do the readers a disservice otherwise. {{Infobox legislative election}} is a cop-out. We've got a table farther down the page for a pure list. An RfC every now and again is a small price to pay for a good infobox. TheSavageNorwegian 15:47, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  Exactly! I always sigh at the Israeli election infoboxes, even though there, there really isn't an other option. But for six parties? Totally feasible. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 19:49, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Yep, we aren't in a 2023 netherlands situation with over a dozen parties represented, much more analogous to 2021 norway as an example. Yeoutie (talk) 04:10, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C All parties that had seats in the Bundestag going into the election should be included. SSW can be excluded because they are a regionalist party with only one seat. Maybe an "others" category? Nevermore27 (talk) 15:21, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  That gives undue weight in favor of the BSW. Because it should make a difference if you earned seats in the previous election, i. e. you're an established political force, or you just poached 10 seats. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 19:47, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  By definition BSW is not an established party force, but its leader Sarah Wagenknecht was a sitting Parliamentarian and one of the most famous members, so you can think of them as a split from existing Die Linke members on one hand, and of course potentially bringing in new politicians. In that sense, I also don't see BSW as a totally new/outsider party like Pirate Party or Volt. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:53, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

@Maxwhollymoralground: I see where you're coming from but they were undeniably an important factor in the election. Nevermore27 (talk) 13:58, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Nevermore27: Which is why they were included, to which no one objected, in the pre-election infobox. They're not an important factor now though and the infobox now displays the results. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 14:10, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Maxwhollymoralground: Sure. My opinion hasn't changed but I respect yours Nevermore27 (talk) 16:33, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

That is not an approach taken by any other election articles. We can't have a special rule for German elections. Bondegezou (talk) 13:42, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

• B makes the most sense, and is consistent with how other German elections are formatted. I wanted C to work, but it's cluttered and has no precedent. We open ourselves up to all previous election infoboxes being meddled with if we overturn that precedent. There's no justification for the BSW being included other than they held seats going into the election. That's weak justification; splinter parties happen all the time. For example, we don't include the Libertarian Party in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections infobox even though incumbent party-switcher Justin Amash lost his seat. TheSavageNorwegian 15:35, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
• B - as already outlined by others, the BSW are a splinter from Die Linke which didn't win seats at the last election. Although this wouldn't necessarily be disqualifying by itself, I don't see much of a reason to include them. The SSW are a small regionalist party and are covered amply in the lead section; I don't feel the need to put it in the infobox too. The FDP's wipeout is notable for me because of their status as a member of the outgoing coalition, making it more relevant than either of the others in a historical sense I think. Gazamp (talk) 16:02, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
• D - all parties that won seats should be in the infobox. FDP should be in the infobox because they had won seats in the previous parliament, while BSW had a higher share of the vote than them. Plus, the FDP and the BSW are treated as major parties by the media (AFAIK), and ultimately we should be making these decisions based on reliable sources, who treated them as major parties.-- Earl Andrew - talk 16:15, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  "while BSW had a higher share of the vote than them" I have seen this argument so many times now. But: It doesn't matter at all if you miss the threshold by 4,9 or 0,01 %. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 19:50, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  Question, is it your view that the SSW seat should be added to the infobox at 2021 German federal election as well? Point taken about the ever-important directive of following the sources. TheSavageNorwegian 21:53, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

C (although D has my secret sympathies for looking nicer)

On one hand, they didn't win any seats. On the other, FDP and BSW were both extremely relevant to the election and are included in the polling charts after all (so is FW, but FW is marginal). A similar thing comes to mind with the 2015 Polish election - SLD came under the 8% threshold, so they are excluded, but they were extremely relevant to the election and historically aswell, their loss also allowed PiS a direct majority. Yet as I said, they are not in the infobox. Overall, I think the general norm right now would be to keep them off, but I have to say I oppose the norm, and that's basically what this discussion seems to be about. I believe infoboxes should inform the reader of the fates of the most major players - so BSW and FDP included. Polish kurd (talk) 22:25, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

B - the FDP was a major part of the last election, them losing their seats is very notable as otherwise it may imply that the party dissolved in some way. TheFellaVB (talk) 23:48, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

·C - The FDP should be shown because they had a large number of seats going into it, they have been a major party since 1949, were a part of government and the precedent is set in 2013. If the FDP is included the BSW must be as well as the BSW got more votes. If the AFD had gotten more votes in 2013 they should've been included in that infobox too. On top of that they (BSW) had 10 seats going into the election, how they got those seats is irrelevant, they were treated as a parliamentary group. Throughout the entire election they were treated as a major party, often more so then some who won seats. They came within 0.03% of winning seats, and are suing to try and get seats (overseas ballot issues), and have 5 seats in the Bundesrat. They had a massive effect on this election and the infobox should reflect that. I would also accept option D. I don't think the SSW was treated as a major party throughout the election, but as they won a seat I think it would be fair to include them. Option B would be completely biased and unfair. Option A and E I think would be a disservice to viewers for lacking major information, but they'd follow a consistent argument. I don't find the supposed lack of precedent argument to be compelling, the BSW is a new phenomenon in German politics.Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 22:41, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

The BSW are a new phenomenon in German politics, but new parties appearing through defections and then failing to get elected has happened in other countries. Wikipedia election article infoboxes usually do not include parties winning 0 seats, even if they did well last time or had lots of seats in the outgoing parliament. Bondegezou (talk) 11:18, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Also we'd be in line with media showing these parties in the infobox as that's pretty much universal for their graphics. Many of them and the German language page also include the FW, but i think that's unnecessary. However option D does look best though as a graphic. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 22:46, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

• E Include the party that won seats, but not the two that didn't. The argument that the FDP need to be included "to show where all the seats came from" doesn't work IMO because the Bundestag was reduced in size by 105 seats. Number 57 22:57, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

"how they got those seats is irrelevant" no, it's not irrelevant. Otherwise, we should include the Libertarian Party in the 2020 House infobox. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 08:47, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

The Libertarian Party isn't an equivalent example. Because that was only 1 seat, not 10, their one member didn't run for re-election, the media didn't treat them as a major party and their votes were distant behind other parties. That example is only helpful for deciding not to include the values union, which no one is proposing for us to add. A much more comparable example would be the People's Party in Canada, which despite not winning seats has been included. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 19:47, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Politicsenthusiast06 The PPC's infobox inclusion, despite obviously having no relevance to the elections, was another exhausting and pedantic discussion I'm reminded of. I'm sure Wikipedians will find, for the third time, some asinine reason to include it even after it gets 1 % of the vote come April. But that example does have salience because back then, they decided to round up from 4.9 to 5 to warrant their inclusion. But that doesn't really work here? Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 09:29, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

"and are suing to try and get seats (overseas ballot issues)" I don't think that should count as an arguments towards their inclusion unless it actually pulls them towards the 5 %, which IMHO won't happen because the Federal Constitutional Court will throw out their obviously baseless, ridiculous, sore loser claims. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 08:54, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

"Baseless", "ridiculous" or any other such description has absolutely no place on any politics-related Wikipedia page and has zero value on talk pages Polish kurd (talk) 19:13, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Polish kurd I have zero respect for Stalinist, cult of personality cadre parties and their BS. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 20:48, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Maxwhollymoralground: I loathe the BSW like you, but "Stalinist" is ridiculous – Wagenknecht hasn't been a communist or Marxist of any kind since 2010, and the BSW is ideologically more of a conservative neoliberal party than anything else. They do not oppose nor criticise capitalism fundamentally. Wagenknecht supports ordoliberalism and admires Ludwig Erhard (to say nothing of her sympathies for Putin, not exactly a socialist either), and they even call themselves linkskonservativ and appeal to small businesses, that's anything but Marxist. Also, a "cult of personality" is by no means specific to any particular ideology. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:14, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke when I say "Stalinist", I mean the internal organization of the party. When the SED dissolved itself, the late Michael Schumann declared on their party convention "We irrevocably break with Stalinism as a system". With "Stalinism" he obviously didn't mean the SED shot dissenters, he meant the totalitarian way the party was run and internal dissenters were treated. And I do think that applies to the Wagenknecht party, the way she tries to force her will upon the state parties alone is very reminiscent of "democratic centralism". Regardless, Wagenknecht praised both Ulbricht and Stalin! I don't like WSW for obvious reasons, but they actually have a good German-language article on Wagenknecht's political stances, which actually have barely changed: https://www.wsws.org/de/articles/2024/11/08/wage-n08.html There's no internal dissent allowed and, yes, Wagenknecht is treated as this larger-than-life figure, the only uncorrupted politician, the only politician that can save Germany. And as for economic policy, I think the BSW has remained quite statist. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 21:21, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

I think the Romanian situation is a fraud by the PNL. I privately consider the situation a fraud. But it's absolutely wrong for my opinion about the election annulment being fraudulent to influence whether Lasconi & Georgescu should be last or first in the infobox, and it's wrong to use that in any argument in the talk page. Polish kurd (talk) 22:12, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Polish kurd sorry, I was just felt like venting about these claims being taken seriously. To be clear, I hold the BSW to the same standard I hold any other party though: Because the infobox should provide an overview, parties should only be included if they either win seats or had won seats in the previous election. Which is why the BSW isn't included here and the DSU isn't included in the 1990 infobox. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 00:01, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

The DSU didn't play any major role or come even close to winning seats in the 1990 election, and it immediately died off. So again I don't think it's a fair comparison. But that election is notable as the only one that includes a seats before in the infobox. That election was obviously unique, especially since seats were redistributed with the east joining. But this election unlike most others in Germany had a large change of seat count between election. That's why I favour adding that line. The 1961 election is also one I think it should definitely be added for. (Or we just make it standard for all since it's a small addition that won't add clutter and adds some useful information). Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 00:37, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

I would also like to mention that the logic being used to include the FDP would also apply to the DP/GDP in the 1961 election. Since they had won seats in the previous election and had been part of government until 1960. I find the logic behind option B is very flawed and based in biases. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 22:31, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

@Politicsenthusiast06 DP/GDP should be included in the 1961 election IMHO. Don't get why you derive from that that B supporters are biased. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 09:20, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

@Politicsenthusiast06 No, they don't. First of all, voting by mail is not a right in Germany, it's a convenience and sending them out in time is the responsibility of the voter. All Germans abroad can vote at home, nobody was hindered to do that. Second of all, more importantly, the Federal Constitutional Court has VERY high bar for declaring election results invalid. Among other criteria, the errors have to be "mandatsrelevant" and unlike the Berlin High Court for example, they assume a much larger scale. For example, if we just assume 8 % of Germans abroad voted BSW, it still wouldn't be enough. Regardless, NUMEROUS legal experts have called these accusations to have little chance of success. Even if they managed to file something, I don't think it is even relevant enough for the reactions section. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 20:47, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree with the core of the argument you are making, which is that until any decision is made to the contrary (by the Federal Constitutional Court), we should assume the party will end up below 5%. Whether or not the claims are baseless is irrelevant as far as I see it. What matters for inclusion in the infobox would be if the claim is ultimately succesful and the party ends up at 5%. Until then, the claim is most appropriately mentioned in a different section. Gust Justice (talk) 21:06, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Gust Justice You are right, we are getting sidetracked. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 22:15, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, we are discussing the fate of BSW since they haven't reached 5%, if they fail, whatever the consensus here is will remain, if they succeed and reach 5%, there will be no reason to not include them V. L. Mastikosa (talk) 23:32, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 23:59, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

• B. I would vote A if the 2013 election didn't exist as it has included a 0 seat FDP for a decade; this also extends to other German state election articles such as 1994 Brandenburg, showing a clear German election preference to include under 5% parties if demonstrative of drastic seat changes. BSW has no reason to be here; it won 0 seats in the last election, and won 0 this election. SSW should not be here as minor regional parties are commonly excluded from infoboxes wikipedia wide including past German election in which the SSW won a seat. They are #15 in terms of votes in this election, I understand they won a single seat but this is not vital to show in an infobox; its important to remember that the infobox in a wikipedia article is there to help readers get the quickest, most important information from a glance. Yeoutie (talk) 04:06, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

What matters in an election is winning seats. It doesn't matter that SSW are 15th in terms of votes. They get someone in the Parliament, while the FDP and BSW don't. Bondegezou (talk) 11:18, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

• A or E, or possibly D. There is a basic principle that we show parties in infoboxes in order of how many seats they win. What matters in an election above all is being elected, i.e. winning seats. Therefore, we cannot have an infobox that includes a party that won 0 seats while excluding a party than won >0 seats. That would be misleading. Therefore, B and C are unacceptable. The most usual practice across Wikipedia infoboxes is to include all parties that win seats and none that don't win seats, which would be E. Some Wikipedia election infoboxes include the larger parties that won seats, but drop some smaller parties that won seats, which would be A. Only a very few election article infoboxes include parties that won no seats, although there are a few examples: these would be like D. We should follow common practice, so I would prefer A or E. I am not aware of any election article infobox that includes a party that won no seats while excluding a party that did win a seat, which is like B and C. Bondegezou (talk) 11:13, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
• A. I am swayed by Bondegezou's arguments; while I agree that the FDP was a noteworthy actor in this election (it having won seats in the 2021 election and having been a member of the government), the truth is that it won 0 seats. The SSW won 1 seat, which means that, under current widely-accepted infobox inclusion criteria, it should be shown ahead because parties in infoboxes are ordered by seats and 1 > 0. Now, I think there's more than enough arguments to not consider SSW as relevant enough for inclusion in the infobox, but then the FDP shouldn't be there either. I see the arguments for supporting the FDP's inclusion and see that there may be a rough consensus here for option B; however, due to the aforementioned arguments, I cannot bring myself to support it. Impru20^talk 20:43, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
• D and C and the fact that previous articles compare party size at time of election is simply unhelpful if stuff has changed significantly in between, namely FDP stepping down and BSW forming mid-way. We can always choose to ignore individual exceptions of individuals retiring etc, but these are very broad party perspectives. I have no opinion about SSW, but why not? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:50, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

  • B. Regarding the FDP, the precedent has been set by the handling of the 2013 German federal election. Quoting the comments by Impru20, 5 July 2024: "They [FDP] 1) are a long-standing party and were in government; 2) had seats going into the election and lost them; 3) Scored fifth and are shown fifth in the infobox. What's the issue?" The situation in 2025 is almost exactly the same, except that this time the FDP came sixth. So what?

  SRamzy (talk) 00:45, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

  The so what is that there's now 2 parties that in a way came ahead of the FDP, that under option B aren't included. 2013 the infobox didn't have a problem of including 6th while excluding 6th. Or including 1 party with 0 seats while excluding another with a seat. Those are pretty major differences. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 06:01, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

  The SSW can´t be counted as coming ahead of the FDP: their vote is miniscule in the whole of Germany compared with the 4.3% the FDP received. They only received their 1 seat on a technicality.

  As for the BSW, as a number of others have commented, they had 0 seats at the last election and won 0 at this election. So there is no significant change, and no point in including them.

  The FDP had 91 seats and were part of the government, so their outcome is significant. SRamzy (talk) 07:35, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

  That's exactly the point. The "so what" is that the SSW is now in-between: you cannot add the FDP and not add the SSW. It does not matter whether "their vote is minuscule": they won 1 seat to FDP's zero. And we order parties in the infobox on the basis of seats, not popular vote (or their presence in government, which, btw, they weren't a part of since November 2024. The FDP wasn't in government going into the election). That's why my stance here is different, because this is not the same as the 2013 case, no matter how many times you want to quote me. You can exclude the SSW, but then you cannot add the FDP (and if you add the FDP then there is very little argument to exclude BSW, because they actually got more votes than the FDP to the same zero seats). Different situations mean different solutions. Impru20^talk 09:22, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

  Indeed. The current infobox, which follows B, lists the FDP sixth. Someone looking at that infobox will presume from that that the FDP came sixth. The FDP did not come sixth, in either seats or votes. It is thus highly misleading. Wikipedia articles need to reflect what is true. The FDP did not come sixth, so we cannot list them as sixth. Bondegezou (talk) 13:13, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

  The current setup makes little sense, because if one argues that we should order parties by seats, then the SSW should come ahead; and if one says that we should order parties by votes, then the BSW should come before the FDP. For 2013 it was very straightforward as the FDP could be considered the fifth political force both in terms of votes and seats, as well as a relevant force going into the election (they were in government) but that is not the case here. Impru20^talk 13:20, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

  The claim that the FDP "were not part of the government" is only true in a technical sense. They were part of the government for most of the past three and a half years, and their departure from the government triggered the election.

  The point of the infobox is to quickly summarise the essential information most readers will be looking for. They are going to be looking for info on how the FDP did, because the party is nationally significant, whereas the SSW winning a seat is a minor local item which will have no practical outcome on the workings of the Bundestag (they haven´t been invited into coalition negotiations, for instance.)

  I can see the point regarding the BSW, Going into the election, they were a significant political force, especially since the state elections in September. So I could live with C, but then a footnote would be needed to say that they were a new party which had 10 seats going into the election. SRamzy (talk) 23:12, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

  "only true in a technical sense" is not something, really. Either they were in government or not, and by the time of the election they had been out of government by three months. Not that I am considering that this should be by itself a criterion for inclusion in the infobox, but it's just another difference from 2013 when they were actually in government by the time of the election.

  "The point of the infobox is to quickly summarise the essential information most readers will be looking for". Yes, but we cannot circumvent mathematics. It's fairly simple, really. As for the party being "nationally significant", well, it got zero seats, so it is equally significant as of currently as the Free Voters. SSW winning a seat may be a "minor local item" (and that is why I support not adding them to the infobox), but that "minor local item" still got more seats than the FDP. I repeat, we cannot circumvent mathematics.

  On the BSW, it is really not relevant what results they got in state elections. This is the article for the federal election. They did not exist in the previous election, and they got zero seats in this election. They only had 10 seats going into the election because they broke up from Linke, but they did not win any of these in their own right and the infobox does not compare with the pre-election status but with the previous election results. Impru20^talk 09:11, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

  I agree with {[u|Impru20}} above. SRamzy says, The point of the infobox is to quickly summarise the essential information most readers will be looking for. This is true. And the information most readers will be looking for is the result of the election, how different parties did. And if readers see the FDP listed sixth, they will presume that means the FDP came sixth, because what else could that mean? Yet the FDP did not come sixth. If you think it's important to include the FDP (and other election articles in similar situations don't), you have to respect that the FDP did worse than two other parties. Bondegezou (talk) 12:02, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

  RE: Bondegezou:"Yes, but we cannot circumvent mathematics." It depends on whether the intended audience of Wikipedia is human readers or AI chatbots. I guess to a computer program, the only criterion is how many seats were won. If we assume instead that readers are humans who are actually interested in how much of the vote one party or another actually got, then the FDP is way more significant than either the SSW or the FW. More to the point, the party has been significant in German politics since the formation of the Bundesrepublik - and likely will continue to be.

  RE: Impru20 : "Either they were in government or not, and by the time of the election they had been out of government by three months." Yes, but they were in government up until the time of the 2024 German government crisis that precipitated the election, and their whole conduct thereafter until the election date was premised on the campaign already being in full swing. See Lindner's comment: "We are in a campaign. Where is the news here?" (published 17 November, when the formal process of dissolving Parliament was not yet in swing.) The way their vote collapsed is consistent with the way German voters judged the other government parties. From that perspective, their fate is way more important than that of the BSW (though see below). And I repeat, the listing of the FDP results in the 2013 election sets the precedent for this one. On the other hand, I don´t see the relevance of the presentation of election results from the U.S., U.K. or Romania, where the election systems and political systems work differently.

  RE: "If you think it's important to include the FDP (and other election articles in similar situations don't), you have to respect that the FDP did worse than two other parties." As I said earlier, I concede the point regarding the BSW but not the SSW. So I modify my preference to :* C. SRamzy (talk) 08:18, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

  BTW I note (notwithstanding my objections above to enforcing uniform presentation of election results between different electoral systems) that the article on 2025 Western Australian state election has separate rows for results in "Last election" and "Seats before". This is a much neater way of dealing with changes in party representation between elections, as in the case of the BSW and Die Linke. SRamzy (talk) 08:27, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

  @SRamzy: The "we cannot circumvent mathematics" sentence was mine, not Bondegezou's. Anyway, I am fairly sure I am not an AI chatbot or a computer program but quite human, actually. The seat criterion has been in use in Wikipedia for decades and you are calling for an exception here basically because you don't see that the results fit with it. The FDP got zero seats and scored seventh in number of votes. There is no way you can justify its presence and not the SSW's or the BSW's: this is a fact.

"Yes, but they were in government up until the time of the 2024 German government crisis that precipitated the election" Irrelevant. Firstly, because that's a separate political event (which has its own article; you cannot say this is not covered); secondly because that is already mentioned in prose throughout the article and the lead section (so it's not like this is not covered in this article, which one would seem to think by reading your comments); thirdly, because November 2024 is not February 2025: the FDP was not in government going into the election, unlike in 2013 when they were (this is a fact, and not one that can be really be disputed, neither by a human nor by a computer program). It was you who brought forward the 2013 case and you have been disproved: these are not equal situations, for many things (this only being one more), other being than the FDP was fifth both in votes and in seats (it got zero seats, but there was no SSW getting 1 seat nor BSW placing ahead in terms of votes). If anything, the arguments laid out in this discussion may be a reason for revisiting the 2013 case, not for making such an exception here. The rest of your comment is outright WP:SYNTH: I mean, you are basing the inclusion on the FDP wholly on opinions. The infobox reflects facts, not opinions. Linder's comments have absolutely nothing to do with infobox inclusion nor should have; how German voters "judge a government" is not a criterion for infobox inclusion, either. You have been presented examples from infoboxes in a lot of countries, and in none is such an exception made for including a party in the situation of the FDP but not others in a better position. Impru20^talk 08:38, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@Impru20 : RE: "The "we cannot circumvent mathematics" sentence was mine, not Bondegezou's." Then my apologies to both of you. My point is that we (editors and readers) are human beings, so we have to decide what interpretation of the mathematics is most relevant in the context of likely readers. See your comment "This is a fact" and "The infobox reflects facts, not opinions": Data in itself is uninformative; what is significant is how it is interpreted. RE: "I mean, you are basing the inclusion on the FDP wholly on opinions" - well, yes, all judgements are based on opinions - otherwise, judges wouldn´t come to contrary interpretations based on the same facts. Regardless of whether the FDP happened to be a recognised participant in the German government on the day of the election, German voters were very conscious of their actions over the past three and a half years. On the night of the election, the national broadcaster asked for comments from the FDP and BSW, not from the SSW. You can´t say their fate was irrelevant to the voting public. Your comments regarding the 2013 election "They [FDP] 1) are a long-standing party ... and 2) had seats going into the election and lost them" are still valid. even if you try to press the case that they were technically not in government.

RE: "you have been disproved" - well, no - disagreement is not disproof. We are having a discussion here. SRamzy (talk) 09:12, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

A human reader might consider the story of the FDP in this election more important than that of the BSW or SSW, and we can handle that by having more of the article being about the FDP, if that seems appropriate. However, when a human reader looks at the infobox, they have no way of knowing that the FDP is listed sixth in the infobox because some editors thought that the FDP's story was more interesting. A human reader looking at the infobox and seeing six parties apparently listed in order of how well they did will erroneously conclude that those are the top six parties in the elections. (This is even more true if they've looked at any other election article infobox.) They will be misled. We should not mislead readers. Bondegezou (talk) 09:23, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

"so we have to decide what interpretation of the mathematics" (...) "Data in itself is uninformative; what is significant is how it is interpreted" (...) "all judgements are based on opinions" (...) "You can´t say their fate was irrelevant to the voting public" For judgements and interpretations you have the prose in the article or the lead section; the infobox reflects data. No one is opposing discussing the situations of the BSW and the FDP in the article's prose: it is done already. You are talking as if no one is mentioning these parties anywhere, which is false. We are discussing infobox presence, and that is what is based in data, because that's how election infoboxes are designed. What you are proposing is that a human being must see the FDP being placed sixth in the infobox and must assume that it was the sixth political force, when it is false: it was seventh in terms of votes and eighth in terms of seats. This is misinterpreting, not interpreting, facts.

"judges wouldn´t come to contrary interpretations based on the same facts" This is not a court, but an online encyclopaedia.

"well, no - disagreement is not disproof. We are having a discussion here" I mean disproved with respect to the 2013 election comparison, which you brought here. There are quite a few stark differences between the situations at 2013 and 2025, and these are facts, not opinions (you cannot discuss that the FDP was in government in 2013 but exited government in 2024; that there were no SSW/BSW issues in 2013; that the FDP got less share of the vote in 2025 than in 2013; that there was no mismatch in 2023 between the FDP's actual position and the infobox-represented position (fifth); etc.). And specially when you persist in decontextualizing my own comments for the 2013 election: I repeat, this is not the same situation, and that's why my position there is not the same to my position here. I would kindly ask you to stop manipulating my words to attempt to enforce your point. Yes, you have been disproved here. Impru20^talk 09:34, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

By omitting both BSW and SSW from the infobox and keeping FDP in, the result is that the average layman reader would logically interpret it as "the FDP got sixth place in the election". This is not true in terms of both seat count (the SSW beat them out with their one seat), and in terms of vote count (the BSW performed 0.64% better than them). I do agree that the FDP should be included as it was until November 2024 part of the governing coalition, but if neither BSW nor SSW are included, the FDP has no right to be there.

This is why I fundamentally disagree with option B. It completely violates WP:NPOV by selectively including the FDP and neither of BSW or SSW. The FDP came in tied-seventh in seats (0) and seventh in votes (4.33%), so if you want to include the seventh-placed party, you necessarily have to include both sixth-placed parties into the infobox. 2025 is not 2013, in 2013 the FDP actually came in fifth and thus (rightfully) is in the fifth box. In 2025, tied-seventh in seat count and seventh in votes should logically punt them to the eighth box, not the sixth. Frank_{(has DemoCracy DeprivaTion)} 16:56, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed that the FDP came in seventh in votes, as their 4.3% is significantly lower than the 4.97% received by the BSW. I think we´ve established that C is a more reasonable option than B, given the higher vote for the BSW. I don´t agree, though, that the SSW rates higher for the one seat they got under special rules, given that they only received 0.15% of the national vote. SRamzy (talk) 04:51, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I am amenable to not including SSW. However, there does exist a binary choice between FDP and BSW, and the inclusion of SSW would also account for the last of 630 seats. Thus, A, C, and D are my preferred options.

But yeah. I hope we're on the same page? Frank_{(has DemoCracy DeprivaTion)} 14:54, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option A, otherwise option D. Usually parties that do not win seats are excluded from the infobox, regardless of whether they won seats in the previous election. However, if the FDP is included, then the BSW, which received the most votes, should also be included. In fact, the current infobox gives a false representation of the election result, because it makes it appear that the FDP came sixth, when in fact it came seventh.--Scia Della Cometa (talk) 20:53, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
• Not B for similar reasons to Scia Della Cometa: if we're including a party that got a certain percent of the vote, we should include any parties that got a higher share of the vote. Doing otherwise is unclear and confusing. No strong opinion on whether the FDP should be included, though. Elli (talk | contribs) 03:04, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option D I think this is the most reasonable one which takes into account all concerns. There is a strong argument against A and E, which is that the FDP's loss of seats is a noteworthy part of the election and their performance should be summarized in the infobox like it was in the 2013 German election. There is also User:Bondegezou's strong argument that it doesn't make sense to include parties which did not win seats whilst not including parties which won seats, which rules out B and C. Option D satisfies all concerns and I don't see any strong arguments against it. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 05:03, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

  It seems like we have growing consensus around option D. Which I support. Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 18:07, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  There's not really a consensus around any of them- out of first choices, I make it as 8 supporting B, 4 supporting each of C and D, 3 supporting A and 1 supporting E. It's just that D is the option which I expect would be the least objectionable to everyone. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 20:29, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  It is, of course, not a vote. Arguments should be supported by rationales, preferably based in policy, guidelines and practice. Bondegezou (talk) 20:49, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Indeed. The two main arguments that I have seen raised are that the FDP should be included thanks to precedent from the 2013 article, and it being informative to readers to include them thanks to their presence+loss of seats playing major role in the election (hence the large amount of amount of support for option B); and on the other hand the argument that it's inconsistent with general policy to include the FDP whilst excluding both a party which won more seats (SSW) and a party which won more votes (BSW). That's why I feel like D is the only real way to assuage everyone's concerns, and it's consistent with general practice and doesn't have any major negative effects. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 22:00, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  I would mostly agree with that, but with the addition to note that the 2013 article is an outlier and practice is normally not to show parties with 0 seats that had lots previously (as per discussion below). It is sometimes done (as with 2013 German federal election and one or two Canadian elections), but usually isn't (2022 Latvian parliamentary election, 2022 Slovenian parliamentary election, 2024 Icelandic parliamentary election, 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary election, October 2024 Bulgarian parliamentary election, 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election and many others). But I agree D seems to best answer everyone's concerns. (I'd prefer A personally.) We don't have to wait for this RfC to be closed by someone external. If we can show sufficient consensus, we can just agree and move on. How do others feel now about D? Bondegezou (talk) 16:47, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option D - I fully agree with Chessrat here, and I see a lot of similarities with the 2015 Polish parliamentary election which has similar issues (I did not participate in any discussions related to that one though). There we had the United Left which narrowly failed to cross the 8% electoral threshold for coalitions and thus lost all of the 67 seats that the members of this coalition held before. German Minority Electoral Committee was exempt from the threshold as a recognized national minority and thus got one seat - the parallel with SSW is obvious. Now, United Left is not represented in the infobox there, which is a shame, because this collapse was extremely relevant to the Polish election and post-2015 Polish politics.

Excluding the German Committee, this meant that the 2015-2019 Sejm had no left-of-centre party at all. Moreover, the 67 seats the United Left those were more than most parties that did enter the Sejm got - Kukiz'15, Nowoczesna, and the Polish People's Party (left-wing until ~2008, then increasingly moved to the right). Even more importantly, the collapse of the United Left was the only thing that allowed Law and Justice to gain an independent majority in the Sejm, and enact the far-reaching changes that eventually led to the Polish constitutional crisis. A quote:

In the October 25, 2015, Polish election, for the first time since the fall of communism in 1989, a single party PiS won the majority of seats. A small protest leftist party Razem (Together) received 3.62% of the popular vote. That seemingly inconsequential result of a party registered only 3 months earlier was of utmost importance for the PiS’s victory. Razem subtracted enough votes from the larger leftist coalition ZL (United Left) to hold it just below the 8% threshold required of coalitions. The failure of ZL to translate their 7.55% of the vote into seats boosted the performances of other parties. Thanks to the boost, the culturally conservative, economically social democratic PiS won a slim majority of 51.09% of Sejm seats despite collecting only 37.58% of votes. Thus, according to our defnition, Razem was a kingmaker, but not a classic spoiler since without Razem no committee would win the majority. Without such accidental help, PiS wouldn’t have been able to form a cabinet alone (see Table 2).

— Kamiński, Marek M. (2018). "Spoiler effects in proportional representation systems: evidence from eight Polish parliamentary elections, 1991–2015". Public Choice. 176 (3). Springer: 9.

Here's this table 2 that the text refers to. But anyway, enough about Polish history. In this thread, valid concerns have been raised about why FDP, BSW and SSW, and their results, were relevant to this election and German politics as a whole. In this way, I do believe, along Chessrat's reasoning, that Option D addresses all these concerns and recognizes the points made, without any arbitrary decision to dismiss some of the concerns. Brat Forelli🦊 00:01, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

• B , for goodness sake. We already had this discussion. Why are people reopening this can of worms? For the people who want to change the infobox to include parties with 1 seat, I am assuming you will go back to every single German election (federal, state, etc.) and fix those infoboxes too? Who is going to volunteer to do all this work? Looking forward to watching the edits because I am not making them. B is the correct answer in this case. At disolussion, parliaments can look quite messy with a whole slew of "small parties" like WerteUnion in the last German parliament. The infoboxes should compare election vs. election, not dissolution vs. election. --Spaastm (talk) 16:42, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

  I started by supporting B, but the concerns raised by a number of others are valid: it´s not just to include FDP while omitting BSW, which got more of the vote, even though it also failed the 5% threshold. I can live with D as a compromise: it would also look neater than C, which would leave one party straggling in the third row. SRamzy (talk) 10:51, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

  1. This discussion has been ongoing and B was never actually decided on, so we aren't reopening anything. 2. Frankly there are some election articles that should have parties included in the infobox that aren't, with the logic for B the DP party should be included in the 1961 infobox but they aren't. 3. Normally I wouldn't think it necessary to have every party that won 1 seat included, but having a party that won 0 seats and 4.3% of the popular vote while excluding a party with 1 seat and another party with 4.98% of the vote is bias and bad representation of the results. I support D, I would accept A or C and firmly oppose B.

  Politicsenthusiast06 (talk) 02:45, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Comparison with other election articles

There are two issues here. The SSW problem is a niche party winning a small number of seats. The FDP (and BSW) problem is when a party was significant in the previous parliament, but wins zero seats this election. At dissolution, the FDP had 90/733 seats (12%) and BSW had 10/733 (1%) in Germany. We should avoid establishing a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and look to other election articles. I looked at other European elections, taking the most recent election, radiating out from Germany, until I got bored. These fit four groups.

Eight (2024 French legislative election, 2022 Italian general election, 2023 Dutch general election, 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election, 2023 Spanish general election, 2021 Norwegian parliamentary election, 2023 Finnish parliamentary election, 2024 United Kingdom general election) are like A. That is, there are small parties excluded from the infobox. None of these had something like the FDP problem.

Twenty are like E. 2023 Polish parliamentary election, 2021 Czech parliamentary election, 2023 Slovak parliamentary election, 2024 Romanian parliamentary election, 2024 Austrian legislative election, 2022 Swedish general election, 2023 Estonian parliamentary election: these are like E. All parties winning seats are included in the infobox, however these elections did not have an SSW problem, nor an FDP problem.

2022 Danish general election, 2023 Swiss federal election, 2023 Luxembourg general election, 2024 Croatian parliamentary election, 2022 Serbian general election, June 2023 Greek parliamentary election, 2024 Portuguese legislative election: these are like E, all parties winning seats included. These all include situations like the SSW, with parties winning small and very small numbers of seats and still being included. They do not have an FDP problem.

There are then a group of articles that are again like E, all parties included, but where they did have something like the FDP/BSW problem. That is, they had one or more significant parties in the previous parliament who then won 0 seats. Every one of these excluded those parties from the infobox. Looking at these in more detail, the most striking is 2022 Latvian parliamentary election. Here, Harmony won 23/100 seats (23%), both the Conservatives and Union for Latvia won 16/100 seats (16%), and Development/For! won 13/100 seats (13%) in the last election and all of them dropped to 0 in this election. They were not included in the infobox. In other words, parties representing two thirds of the last parliament all vanished, and this is not shown in the infobox.

2022 Slovenian parliamentary election is similar. List of Marjan Šarec won 13/90 (14%) and Let's Connect Slovenia won 10/90 seats (11%) in the last election and both dropped to 0 in this election. They were not included. Likewise, with 2024 Icelandic parliamentary election, Left-Green Movement won 8/63 (13%) and Pirate Party won 6/63 seats (10%) in the last election and both dropped to 0 in this election. They were not included.

On a smaller scale, with 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary election, the Labour Party won 10/141 seats (7%) in the last election and dropped to 0 in this election. They were not included. With October 2024 Bulgarian parliamentary election, Velichie won 13/240 seats (5%) in the last election and dropped to 0 in this election. They were not included. With 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Radical Party of Oleh Liashko won 22/450 seats (5%) in the last election and dropped to 0 in this election. They were not included.

This strongly suggests we should go with E (20 articles) or A (8 articles). No article matches B, C or D (although I have seen D approaches on occasion). Faced with an FDP-like problem, 6 out of 6 articles excluded parties that won no seats. Bondegezou (talk) 13:26, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

@Bondegezou There is no Wiki-wide consensus on election infobox inclusion criteria, I don't see why we can't deviate from other elections (especially if they use other infobox styles, the Infobox legislative version allows for many more parties to be displayed without being cluttered) and you don't explain why we shouldn't do a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. Apart from that, I think you're comparing apples and oranges. None of these countries have an electoral system identical to Germany, but more importantly, Germany has a much more rigid party system. None of the established German parties (parties that won seats in Bundestag elections at least four times) have ever disappeared, which is why it makes sense in my mind to include the FDP – it is more likely they win seats in the next election than for them to just disappear. The Bundestag is also a lot larger than most other European legislatures, which is why 1 seat really doesn't matter. Regardless, the SSW shouldn't be included because the infobox still is supposed to be an overview of the election results. For which neither the BSW nor SSW matter at all, the SSW arguably less so. Maxwhollymoralground (talk) 10:59, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

WP:LOCALCONSENSUS says "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale." It is not the only criterion that matters, but we should avoid doing something very different to other election articles if we can. There aren't written down rules for election article infoboxes, but we can observe common practice. It is useful to look at this common practice.

I entirely accept that there can be reasons to do something different, but they need to be good reasons. I reviewed 28 election articles. The 2025 German election is not sui generis. You say, None of the established German parties (parties that won seats in Bundestag elections at least four times) have ever disappeared, which is why it makes sense in my mind to include the FDP, but the Left-Green Movement had won seats in the last 8 Icelandic elections and when they fell to 0 seats in the latest election, they were dropped from the infobox. Harmony were in the previous 4 Latvian elections. They were the largest party in 2011, 2014 and 2018, before collapsing in 2022 and winning 0 seats. They were dropped from the infobox. No-one has offered a reason why the FDP is more important than these examples. We should look at what other articles do, and all 6 other articles I found with a similar situation to the FDP came up with the same answer.

Every election article infobox I've seen, in this analysis and over many years on Wikipedia, lists parties in order of the number of seats won (ties split by vote share). If we break that, as the current infobox does by having the FDP (0 seats) but not the SSW (1 seat), then we are misleading readers. We cannot do that. Bondegezou (talk) 13:53, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I would say that it is unclear that there definitely is a consensus on this type of article. Not all other articles are immediately comparable. For one, a lot of the examples are countries where there either is no national % threshold, or the threshold is very low (like e.g. the Netherlands). In those cases no clear line can be cut between clearly relevant, major political parties, and "minor" parties. In Germany that distinction can definitely be made, since the high bar of the 5% threshold means that at most 5-6 parties normally enter the legislature. While there is no clear-cut rule, the legislative election template tends to be used where there is no clear line between major parties and minor parties. It is also used where party leaders/main candidates don't play the same kind of prominent role. In all of these cases, that template easily allows showing all political parties winning seats, with no major downside. Whereas the regular election infobox is generally seen as looking worse beyond 6 parties or candidates.

Regarding the FDP more specifically, while it is true most articles for multi-party elections do not include a party in the infobox if it was previously prominent, but lost all of its seats due to the electoral threshold. However for the Federal Republic of Germany, this can be justified due to just how rare it is. Since the national 5% threshold was introduced in 1953, the number of times a party, having previously cleared the 5% threshold, failed to clear the threshold, is very small. As far as I can tell, it only ever happened in 1957, 1990, 2002, 2013, and 2025. That is very rare. You can compare this to e.g. eastern European countries, whose party systems are younger and typically less stable than in Germany. In those countries, you might see one or even multiple parliamentary parties fall short of the threshold in any given election and parties come and go. In those instances, showing those parties would be less significant, and would take up a lot more space overall. Looking at the instances in Germany, the 2002 and 2013 articles do depict the party falling short of the threshold (although in 2002 the PDS did win two constituency seats). 1990 was arguably a special case, as the Western Greens fell short of the 5% threshold in the west, while its eastern counterpart cleared the threshold in the east. Including both parties/alliances separately, while technically correct, would have made it rather confusing overall. In 1957 the GB/BHE fell short of the 5% threshold. I would actually argue it should be included, but we can leave that question aside for now.

As for the SSW, the best comparison I can think of would be the German minority in Poland. The seat(s) won by that party are, unlike in the case of any of the other countries mentioned, "minority seats" as such, nor are they won in a special constituency covering a very small area. Like the SSW, it is simply excempt from the national 5% threshold that apply for the other parties, and similar to the SSW, the amount of seats it wins depends on the number of votes received. In this regard, it competes as a regular party in a direct competition with the parties clearing the 5% threshold. In other words, the seat(s) won by the party is/are not special. The only difference is the absence of the 5% threshold for the party. When it comes to the German minority, Polish election articles have been quite inconsistent. Generally it seems that it included where it is the 6th largest party by seats, and including it doesn't clutter the infobox. But in other years only the top 6 "main" parties are included. On the other hand, Poland doesn't show the parties dropping below the threshold. Most notable in 2015, the United Left was not shown despite getting more votes than the PSL.

Overall, I would say that there is no clear existing consensus on how to treat the given situations. Certainly, most infoboxes do not show parties losing all of its seat due to failing to clear an electoral threshold. But on the other hand, the other examples don't have the same kind of characteristics as the German political system. Regarding the SSW, there aren't many parties that can directly be compared to it, and the one example I can think of, is itself treated inconsistently. Gust Justice (talk) 17:28, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I find the argument that the FDP dropping out of the parliament in Germany is different to all these other examples entirely unconvincing. It's special pleading not based on any Wikipedia policies. Other Wikipedia election articles have converged on the same approach. We talk about the FDP's fate in the article and in the lead. We don't need to go against the approach elsewhere and do something different by putting them in the infobox as well. Bondegezou (talk) 10:22, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your time and analysis. I think that E is indeed the best option, as it not only is more consistent with other articles, as you've shown. I think that we should follow the source [2] in either including only the SSW, or including both the SSW and FDP. Including the BSW simply doesn't make sense. 1101 (talk) 07:46, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Government formation

The text of this section currently begins: "The failure of the FDP and BSW to reach the 5 per cent threshold in the Bundestag meant that the majorities in the Bundestag were clearly divided". Can anyone explain what this is intended to mean? Either a party / coalition has a majority or it doesn´t. So what is the intended meaning of "majorities" in the plural, and how can this be rephrased to be less opaque? SRamzy (talk) 08:26, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@SRamzy A rephrasing would definitely be in order. Perhaps moving it to a different section would be better for clarity.The intended meaning is that because both FDP and BSW failed to clear the threshold, those votes are not taken into account in the distribution of seats, and this then allowed the CDU/CSU and SPD to win a majority of seats. I would say it would be more fitting to explain why a government consisting of the CDU/CSU and SPD was the only combination that was seriously considered. This can be down though having a table listing the combinations. Gust Justice (talk) 09:07, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I don´t have time to add a table at present, but it sounds like a good way to go. SRamzy (talk) 09:15, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Debt brake agreement

Propose to make the 'Debt brake agreement', a self-standing article. It does not belong in the Government Formation section of the article and warrants coverage elsewhere. Mrodowicz (talk) 04:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mrodowicz I would agree. Much of it belongs on the German debt amendment article. The government formation section should mention it, but in summary style. Gust Justice (talk) 04:47, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mrodowicz I disagree. The issue is critical to formation of the new German government following the election. Without the swift resolution and success in passing the legislation to reform the debt brake through the outgoing Parliament, the incoming government would have been crippled from the very beginning. SRamzy (talk) 07:36, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

@SRamzy The section is overlong and is only passingly relevant to government formation. A link to a longer article would suffice for those interested in that side of things. Mrodowicz (talk) 14:42, 4 April 2025 (UTC)