'Overhang' election

Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) have repeated their warning that a new coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) would be "illegitimate" if it were dependent upon winning additional seats that are awarded through an anomaly of the country's election laws.

Germans elect their representatives in a complicated process. It involves dividing up the 598 seats in the Bundestag, or parliament, into two groups, which are filled using two votes. The first vote is for an actual candidate: Each electoral district has candidates from one or several parties that campaign for a seat. These seats are handed out in a simple, first-past-the-post majority, a system that often places smaller parties at a disadvantage.

Two-vote system

The other 299 seats are allocated based on the second vote, which is for a party. The votes of the 62 million Germans eligible to take part in the election are added up and then divided by the number of parties. Those seats are then handed out to the people each party has put on a list, which is divided up among all 16 German states.

An example: In 2005 the conservative CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CSU took 35.2 percent of the vote for parties. But 150 of their candidates were elected directly.

Under German electoral law, if a party wins more direct seats than they would be entitled to under the votes cast for the party lists, then they are allowed to keep those extra seats and the total number in the Bundestag simply goes up. This is known as the Ueberhangmandate, or "overhang seats."

Thus, the conservatives were awarded 246 parliamentary seats -- some five percent more than the proportion of the party votes cast for them.

If we take a local example, we see that the CDU won 31 out of 35 districts in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, which means they were entitled to 31 seats. However, when its share of the second vote was tallied, it was actually only supposed to get 28 of the state's 74 seats, meaning it got three extra seats.

At the moment, there are 611 seats in the Bundestag, which include the 13 overhang seats that were created by the 2005 election. The amount of overhang seats is determined anew by each election.

Last week, Merkel sparked debate by saying she was prepared to form a government with a coalition whose majority was based purely on these additional seats.

'Not a second-class mandate'

"A mandate based on overhang seats is no second class mandate," the chancellor said during a press conference. The SPD's parliamentary leader Thomas Oppermann responded that, if this were to happen, "for the first time in Germany there would be a government which the voters didn't choose and didn't want."

Normally, this isn't a big deal. Back in 2005 it wasn't enough to give the CDU anything close to a clear majority and they were forced to form a Grand Coalition with the SPD. However, in 1994 the CDU was granted 12 extra overhang seats, allowing Helmut Kohl to maintain his position as chancellor.

mrm/dpa/Reuters/AFP
Editor: Tony Dunham