Press release no. 11/17 of 11. August 2017

Order of parties on the ballot paper

WIESBADEN – The order of parties on the ballot papers to be used in the Bundestag election on 24 September 2017 will not be the same in all of Germany. The Federal Returning Officer states that individual ballot papers are printed for each constituency because different candidates will stand for direct election in the 299 constituencies.

As a consequence, there have to be 299 different ballot papers.

The content and the structure of the ballot papers are specified in Section 30 of the Federal Elections Act. In keeping with that provision, constituency candidates competing for first votes are listed in the left-hand column, while the Land lists of the parties for which second votes may be cast appear in the right-hand column of the ballot paper. At the top of the list, the order is determined by the parties running with Land lists. Their order in the right-hand column of the ballot paper depends on how many second votes these parties won in the respective Land in the latest Bundestag election of 2013. All other parties are listed in alphabetical order. This means that the order of parties on the ballot papers will be the same for each Land.

In the 2017 Bundestag Election, the CDU will be first on the ballot paper in thirteen Länder (Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachsen, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Berlin, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Sachsen, Hessen, Thüringen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland), the SPD will be first in two Länder (Hamburg and Bremen), and the CSU in Bayern.

The SPD will be listed second in ten Länder (Schleswig-Holstein, Niedersachsen, Brandenburg, Berlin, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland), in four Länder it will be the party DIE LINKE (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen and Thüringen) and in two Länder the CDU (Hamburg and Bremen).

The party DIE GRÜNEN will be third of the list in nine Länder (Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Bremen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern and Baden-Württemberg), in four Länder the SPD will be listed third (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen and Thüringen), and DIE LINKE in three Länder (Brandenburg, Berlin and Saarland).

In five Länder, DIE LINKE will be fourth on the ballot paper (Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Bremen, Nordrhein-Westfalen and Hessen), and in another five Länder the AfD (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen and Thüringen), in four Länder the FDP will be listed fourth (Schleswig-Holstein, Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern and Baden-Württemberg), and in Berlin and Saarland it will be DIE GRÜNEN.

The AfD will be fifth of the list in six Länder (Bremen, Berlin, Hessen, Bayern, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland), in five Länder DIE GRÜNEN (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen and Thüringen) and in two Länder DIE LINKE (Schleswig-Holstein and Rheinland-Pfalz).

In the left-hand column of the ballot paper there will be the names of the constituency candidates in the order of the Land lists. Constituency candidates of parties without Land lists and of voters’ (only in german) associations as well as individual candidates admitted in the constituency concerned will follow in alphabetical order.

Approved candidates will appear on the ballot papers even if a party should declare that it does no longer intend to participate in the election.

For further information:
Office of the Federal Returning Officer
tel: +49 611 75-4863
www.bundeswahlleiter.de/contact