The article looks at how voters elect candidates and parties in Bundestag elections and elections to the Berlin House of Representatives, and how seats in parliament are distributed through proportional representation.

In Bundestag elections or elections to the House of Representatives, voters cast both a first vote and a second vote. With the first vote, citizens choose a candidate directly in their electoral district. Each party may nominate one candidate per district.

The winner is determined according to the first-past-the-post principle (“winner takes all”), meaning that the candidate with the most votes receives the direct mandate. This gives the candidate the right to enter the Bundestag or the House of Representatives if their party has won enough seats through the second vote. If a party has fewer seats than direct mandates, the constituency winners with the highest vote shares in their electoral district enter parliament first until all seats are filled.

The first vote is an instrument intended to ensure the representation of many electoral districts and local interests in the Bundestag or the House of Representatives. All electoral districts have similarly sized populations (on average 240,000 in 2023), and the maximum deviation is limited to 25 percent, meaning that each candidate represents a similar number of people. However, only German citizens are counted in this calculation.