Why the parliament grows to 900 members

A horror scenario threatens: “If the CSU wins all 46 direct mandates in Bavaria, as in 2017, the Bundestag would have around 900 members according to the current forecasts,” predicts Matthias Moehl, head of the constituency analysis platform Election.de. According to his current forecasts, the SPD and the Greens will win five to six constituencies in Munich and Nuremberg and possibly also in Augsburg. But even then, “it would still be around 800”, calculates Moehl.

In a federal election since German reunification, the eligible voters actually decide on 598 seats in parliament – a candidate has to be chosen directly from each of the 299 constituencies and on top of that with the second vote the parties and their 299 representatives who move in via the state lists. However, since 1990, more than 600 politicians have been able to look forward to entering parliament.

In this electoral period there are even 709: 299 directly elected and 410 other parliamentarians who made it through the state lists of the parties – 111 of them as compensation mandate holders. The administration had to offer rooms and build new ones, MPs had to move together.

The weaker the popular parties, the more overhang seats

The world in the German Bundestag was fine as long as the people’s parties were still achieving stable results above 30 percent. This was the case before reunification. Sometimes the SPD provided the federal government together with the FDP, but mostly CDU and CSU with the liberals, divided into 518 mandates at the time. Overhang mandates played no role.

That only changed when, in addition to the CDU / CSU, SPD and FDP, not only the Greens but also the left sat in parliament and even decided on overhang mandates: in 1998, for example, the SPD was able to unite 13 and thus all overhang mandates. In 2009 there were 24 extra mandates for the Union – without being offset by the other parties.

Since this electoral term, the AfD has also been in the Bundestag and there are even 47 overhang seats, for which there are new rules according to the judgments of the Federal Constitutional Court. In the past, overhang mandates were not evened out, according to the new federal electoral law, this now happens from the fourth overhang mandate.

Overhang mandates from a party in one federal state are partially offset against the result in other federal states. For example, given its strength in Saxony, the AfD currently has three overhang mandates and the CDU in Baden-Württemberg has twelve, according to Election boss Moehl. The SPD will presumably win four more direct mandates in Hesse than it is actually entitled to in terms of seats after the second vote result. In addition, there are a few other mandates in the rest of the republic.

Strong direct candidates for the CSU, but a weak party

And yet this can “only dampen, but not prevent” the Bundestag from growing and growing, as Moehl says. “With every CSU overhang mandate, about 20 compensation mandates arise for the other parties in the Bundestag.”

The reason is simple: the CSU only competes in Bavaria, so it cannot offset its result with that in other regional associations. Therefore: “For the size of the Bundestag, only the CSU overhang mandates are decisive, because the resulting compensation mandates then more than compensate for the overhangs of the other parties.”

So candidates pour into the Bundestag who did not expect it themselves. The right to vote assumes that the party that receives a particularly large number of second votes is just as successful with the first votes. But that is precisely what is no longer the case. Attempts at a fundamental reform of the electoral law have always failed because either the large or the small parties feel disadvantaged.

The constitutional lawyer Sophie Schönberger from the University of Düsseldorf criticizes this development. The days of parliaments with two large popular parties are over. “The right to vote is basically not adjusted to this new party system, which has rather medium-sized parties,” she says. She not only criticizes the fact that this makes parliament much more expensive for taxpayers. “The committees are also getting bigger” – and thus the work is more difficult. “Then the Bundestag simply no longer works as a parliament, and that is a big, big democratic problem.”

Strong top candidates ensure many second votes

It is difficult to estimate how much the results of the major parties deviate in the first and second votes, says Moehl. “Union voters who migrate to the FDP remain to a large extent loyal to the direct candidates of the Union. On the other hand, the SPD is less able to rely on first votes from Greens voters than before, as they increasingly give the first votes to the Greens too, ”he observed.

The top candidate also plays an important role again and again, such as recently in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia. Reiner Haseloff from the CDU, Malu Dreyer from the SPD and Bodo Ramelow from the Left Party ensured a strong second vote result, “while the first votes lagged behind this development”.

Something like that ensures that there are no overhang mandates. However, this effect does not apply to the CDU and CSU in view of the low popularity ratings of top candidate Armin Laschet. “With a comparatively low share of second votes, the Union would then receive numerous overhang mandates, which are decisive for the size of the Bundestag, especially in the case of the CSU,” says Moehl.

Couldn’t more MPs help make better laws because MPs could better divide up the work and issues? Constitutional lawyer Schönberger has her doubts: “The problem is that with a larger parliament you primarily produce more backbenchers.”

More: Political scientist Korte: “The Union is in a vision vacuum”