Press release no. 12/2013 of 12. August 2013

Order of parties on the ballot papers for the Bundestag election

WIESBADEN – The Federal Returning Officer is frequently asked why the order of parties on the ballot papers for the Bundestag election on 22 September 2013 will not be the same everywhere in Germany. The answer is that individual ballot papers are printed for the constituencies because different candidates will stand for direct election in each of the 299 constituencies. As a consequence, there will be 299 different ballot papers.

The content and the structure of the ballot papers are specified in Section 30 of the Federal Elections Act. According to that provision, the constituency candidates for which the first votes may be cast are listed in the left-hand column of the ballot paper, while the Land lists of the parties for which the second votes may be cast appear in the right-hand column. At the top of the list, the order is determined by the parties running with Land lists. Their order in the right column of the ballot paper depends on how many second votes they won in the respective Land in the latest Bundestag election of 2009. All other parties will be listed in alphabetical order.

This means that the order of parties on the ballot papers will be the same for each Land.

In the 2013 Bundestag Election, the CDU will take rank number 1 in twelve Länder (in Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Berlin, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Sachsen, Hessen, Thüringen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland), DIE LINKE will be first on the ballot paper in two Länder (Brandenburg and Sachsen-Anhalt), in Bremen the SPD will be first and in Bayern the CSU.

Rank number 2 will be occupied by the SPD in ten Länder (Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Brandenburg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland), in four Länder it will be taken by DIE LINKE (in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Berlin, Sachsen and Thüringen) and in two Länder by the CDU (in Bremen and Sachsen-Anhalt).

The FDP will be third on the list in seven Länder (Schleswig-Holstein, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern and Baden-Württemberg), in five Länder the SPD will take rank number 3 (in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen-Anhalt, Berlin, Sachsen and Thüringen), the GRÜNEN in two Länder (Hamburg and Bremen), the CDU in Brandenburg and DIE LINKE in Saarland.

Rank number 4 will go to the GRÜNEN in eight Länder (Schleswig-Holstein, Niedersachsen, Berlin, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern and Baden-Württemberg), in seven Länder it will go to the FDP (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hamburg, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen, Thüringen and Saarland) and in Bremen to the party DIE LINKE.

Rank number 5 will be occupied by the party DIE LINKE in eight Länder (Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern and Baden-Württemberg), in six Länder by the GRÜNEN (in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen, Thüringen and Saarland) and in two Länder by the FDP (in Bremen and Berlin).

The order of the Land lists following in the right column of the ballot paper is also determined by the number of second votes won by those parties in the respective Land in the latest Bundestag election of 2009. Parties which did not participate with Land lists in the latest Bundestag election or will run for the first time in the forthcoming 2013 Bundestag Election will follow with their Land lists in alphabetical order.

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 associations of voters or individual candidates which have been admitted in the constituency concerned will be listed in alphabetical order at the end.

For the exact order of the constituency candidates as constituency nominations and of the Land lists on the ballot papers of the individual Länder please refer to www.bundeswahlleiter.de.

Approved candidates will be shown on the ballot papers even if a party should declare that it intends to withdraw its participation in the election.

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