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Erststimme vs Zweitstimme: How Germany's Two-Vote System Works

GetGermanReady••5 min readLiDEinbürgerungstestCivics

Walk into a German polling station for a Bundestagswahl (federal election) and you're handed a ballot with two columns. Not two ballots — one paper, two votes. Most people, including plenty of Germans, aren't quite sure what the second one actually does. And it turns out the second vote — the Zweitstimme — is the one that really decides who governs.

Germany's system is called personalisierte Verhältniswahl (personalised proportional representation). You get an Erststimme (first vote) and a Zweitstimme (second vote), and they do completely different jobs.

The one that matters
Your Zweitstimme (the party vote) decides how many seats each party gets in the Bundestag — and therefore who can form a government. If you only understand one of your two votes, understand this one.

Erststimme — you pick a person

With your Erststimme you vote for a direct candidate in your local constituency (Wahlkreis) — there are 299 of them across Germany. Whoever gets the most votes in your Wahlkreis wins that seat directly and goes to the Bundestag. It's a simple winner-takes-the-seat vote, and it puts a real name and face from your area into parliament.

Zweitstimme — you pick a party

With your Zweitstimme you vote for a party list. This is the proportional part: the share of Zweitstimmen a party wins across the country determines its overall share of seats in the Bundestag. Win roughly 30% of the Zweitstimmen, get roughly 30% of the seats. That's why it's the decisive vote — it sets the balance of power.

One catch worth knowing: a party generally needs at least 5% of the Zweitstimmen (the Fünf-Prozent-Hürde, or five-percent hurdle) to enter the Bundestag at all — a rule designed to stop parliament from splintering into dozens of tiny parties.

It's a real exam question
„Je mehr ‚Zweitstimmen' eine Partei bei einer Bundestagswahl bekommt, desto …“ → „… mehr Sitze bekommt sie im Bundestag.“ (The more second votes a party gets, the more seats it gets in parliament.) This is question 93 in the official Einbürgerungstest.

The word behind the vote: die Erststimme

diedie Erststimme
erst — first+Stimme — voice — and, in elections, vote
literally the “first voice”→your first vote — the one for a direct local candidate. Its partner is die Zweitstimme (zweit = second), the party vote that decides the seat totals.

Germany pioneered this — then others copied it

This mix of a direct vote plus a proportional vote is a mixed-member proportional system. West Germany built it into its new democracy after 1949 — a deliberate answer to the instability of the Weimar Republic — and refined it into today's two-vote form in 1953. It worked well enough that New Zealand adopted a version in the 1990s, and Scotland and Wales use it too. But it started in West Germany.

Common mix-ups

  • Thinking the Erststimme is the important one. It feels personal, but the Zweitstimme sets the seat totals. A lot of people get this backwards.
  • Assuming you must vote for the same party twice. You can split your ticket — Erststimme for a local candidate you like, Zweitstimme for a different party. This is called Stimmensplitting.
  • Forgetting the 5% hurdle. A party can win a fair few votes and still get no seats if it stays under 5% (with some exceptions tied to direct mandates).
Which vote decides how many seats a party gets in the Bundestag?
The Zweitstimme (second vote, the party vote). The Erststimme only elects your local direct candidate.
Can you give your two votes to different parties?
Yes — that's Stimmensplitting. Your Erststimme can go to a local candidate from one party and your Zweitstimme to a different party entirely.

The takeaway

One ballot, two jobs: the Erststimme sends a local face to parliament, the Zweitstimme sets the balance of power. Understand that the Zweitstimme is the powerful one and you understand German elections better than plenty of people who've voted for years — and you've nailed a real Einbürgerungstest question along the way.