Germany Federal election 2017 — Results
Election day: September 24, 2017
- CDU/CSU: 32.93%, 246 seats
- SPD: 20.51%, 153 seats
- AfD: 12.64%, 94 seats
- FDP: 10.75%, 80 seats
- Die Linke: 9.24%, 69 seats
- Grüne: 8.94%, 67 seats
- Others: 4.99%, 0 seats
Turnout: 76.20%
About this election
The electoral system
Germany elects its federal parliament, the Bundestag, by mixed-member proportional representation. Each voter casts two votes: a first vote (Erststimme) for a local candidate in one of 299 constituencies, elected by first-past-the-post, and a second vote (Zweitstimme) for a party list in their state. It is the second vote that matters most: it determines each party's overall share of seats, with the constituency winners filling part of that quota and party lists filling the rest. A party must clear 5% of the national vote, or win three constituencies, to share in the proportional distribution. Because the system corrects for any imbalance with "overhang" and "levelling" seats, the 2017 Bundestag swelled to 709 members — far above the nominal 598. The figures shown here are the second vote (Zweitstimme).
Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.
In numbers
- 12.42 points separated CDU/CSU from SPD — 5,777,963 votes.
- CDU/CSU converted 32.93% of the vote into 246 of 709 seats (34.70%), 1.77 points more than its vote share.
- The top two shared 53.44% of the vote between them, and 6 lists cleared 5%.
- Support for CDU/CSU ranged from 38.82% in Bayern to 22.70% in Berlin — a spread of 16.12 points across 16 regions, and it led in 14 of 16.
- Turnout of 76.20% is the lowest of the 3 federal elections covered here since 2017.
Calculated from the official figures on this page and from the other elections of this type in our archive.
Understanding this election
- Why Turnout Figures Disagree — why two sources publish different turnout for one election
- D’Hondt vs Sainte-Laguë — how a divisor formula turns vote shares into seats
- How Electoral Systems Work Around the World — first-past-the-post, proportional and mixed systems, with real numbers