Germany Federal election 2021 — Results
Election day: September 26, 2021
- SPD: 25.71%, 206 seats
- CDU/CSU: 24.14%, 197 seats
- Grüne: 14.72%, 118 seats
- FDP: 11.43%, 91 seats
- AfD: 10.39%, 83 seats
- Die Linke: 4.87%, 39 seats
- SSW: 0.12%, 1 seats
- Others: 8.62%, 0 seats
Turnout: 76.40%
About this election
The electoral system
Germany uses mixed-member proportional representation: a first vote for a local constituency MP and a decisive second vote (Zweitstimme) for a party list that sets each party's overall share of the Bundestag. Parties must clear a 5% threshold or win three constituencies. The compensating overhang and levelling seats pushed the 2021 Bundestag to 735 members, prompting the electoral reform that would shrink the next parliament. The figures here are the second vote.
Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.
In numbers
- 1.57 points separated SPD from CDU/CSU — 723,811 votes.
- SPD converted 25.71% of the vote into 206 of 735 seats (28.03%), 2.32 points more than its vote share.
- The top two shared 49.85% of the vote between them, and 6 lists cleared 5%.
- SPD moved +5.20 points against the 2017 federal election (20.51% → 25.71%).
- Support for SPD ranged from 37.26% in Saarland to 17.98% in Bayern — a spread of 19.28 points across 16 regions, and it led in 12 of 16.
Calculated from the official figures on this page and from the other elections of this type in our archive.
Understanding this 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
- Why Election Maps Look Different From the Popular Vote — why a map can look one-sided when the vote was close