The Bundestag is the German federal parliament. It can be compared to the chamber of deputies along the lines of the United States House of Representatives or the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. Through the Bundesrat, a separate institution, the individual states of Germany participate in legislation similar to a second house in a bicameral parliament.
The Free Democratic Party is a liberal and classical liberal political party in Germany. The FDP is led by Christian Lindner.
Party-list proportional representation systems are a family of voting systems emphasizing proportional representation (PR) in elections in which multiple candidates are elected through allocations to an electoral list. They can also be used as part of mixed additional member systems.
The electoral threshold is the minimum share of the primary vote which a candidate or political party requires to achieve before they become entitled to any representation in a legislature. This limit can operate in various ways. For example, in party-list proportional representation systems an election threshold requires that a party must receive a specified minimum percentage of votes, either nationally or in a particular electoral district, to obtain any seats in the legislature. In multi-member constituencies using preferential voting, besides the electoral threshold, to be awarded a seat, a candidate is also required to achieve a quota, either on the primary vote or after distribution of preferences, which depends on the number of members to be return from a constituency.
Mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation is a mixed electoral system in which voters get two votes: one to decide the representative for their single-seat constituency, and one for a political party. Seats in the legislature are filled firstly by the successful constituency candidates, and secondly, by party candidates based on the percentage of nationwide or region-wide votes that each party received. The constituency representatives are elected using first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) or another plurality/majoritarian system. The nationwide or region-wide party representatives are, in most jurisdictions, drawn from published party lists, similar to party-list proportional representation. To gain a nationwide representative, parties may be required to achieve a minimum number of constituency candidates, a minimum percentage of the nationwide party vote, or both.
Federal elections were held in Germany on 18 September 2005 to elect the members of the 16th Bundestag. This became necessary after a motion of confidence in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder failed on 1 July. Following the defeat of Schröder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) in a state election, Schröder asked his supporters to abstain from the Bundestag motion, knowing the motion would fail and thus triggering an early federal election.
Federal elections were held in Germany on 14 September 1930. Despite losing ten seats, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) remained the largest party in the Reichstag, winning 143 of the 577 seats, while the Nazi Party (NSDAP) dramatically increased its number of seats from 12 to 107. The Communists also increased their parliamentary representation, gaining 23 seats and becoming the third-largest party in the Reichstag.
General elections were held in Italy on 19 May 1968 to select the Fifth Republican Parliament. Democrazia Cristiana (DC) remained stable around 38% of the votes. They were marked by a victory of the Communist Party (PCI) passing from 25% of 1963 to c. 30% at the Senate, where it presented jointly with the new Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (PSIUP), which included members of Socialist Party (PSI) which disagreed the latter's alliance with DC. PSIUP gained c. 4.5% at the Chamber. The Socialist Party and the Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI) presented together as the Unified PSI–PSDI, but gained c. 15%, far less than the sum of what the two parties had obtained separately in 1963.
General elections were held in Italy on 26 June 1983, to select the Ninth Republican Parliament. The Pentaparty formula, the governative alliance between five centrist parties, caused unexpected problems to Christian Democracy. The alliance was fixed and universal, extended both to the national government and to the local administrations. Considering that the election result did not longer depend by the strength of the DC, but by the strength of the entire Pentapartito, centrist electors began to look at the Christian Democratic vote as not necessary to prevent a Communist success. More, voting for one of the four minor parties of the alliance was seen as a form of moderate protest against the government without giving advantages to the PCI. Other minor effects of this election were a reduction of the referendarian Radical Party and the appearance of some regional forces.
General elections were held in Italy on 14 June 1987, to select the Tenth Republican Parliament. This election marked the final inversion of the trend of the entire republican history of Italy: for the first time, the distance between the Christian Democrats and the Communists grew significantly instead of decreasing, and this fact was seen as the result of the deindustrialization of the country. The growth of the service sector of the economy, and the leadership of former PM Bettino Craxi, gave instead a new strength to the Socialists. A remarkable novelty was the rise of the new Green Lists, while a new party obtained its first two parliamentary seats: the Northern League.
The Left, also commonly referred to as the Left Party, is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. It is considered to be left-wing populist by some researchers. The party was founded in 2007 as the result of the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG). Through the PDS, the party is the direct descendant of the ruling party of the former East Germany (GDR), the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
Federal elections were held on 22 September to elect the members of the 18th Bundestag of Germany. At stake were all 598 seats to the Bundestag, plus 33 overhang seats determined thereafter. The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel won their best result since 1990, with nearly 42% of the vote and nearly 50% of the seats. However, their coalition partner, the Free Democrats (FDP), failed to meet the 5% vote threshold in what was their worst showing ever in a federal election, thus denying them seats in the Bundestag for the first time in their history.
The European Parliament election of 2009 in Germany was the German part of the European Parliament election, 2009. The voting was held on Sunday, 7 June. A total of 26 parties competed for the 99 seats reserved for Germany in the European Parliament. In the previous election of 2004, the six parties which were represented in the German national parliament (Bundestag) from 2005 to 2013, had entered the European Parliament by overcoming the 5% election threshold. The same parties entered the European Parliament this time. None of the other parties managed to gain more than 1.7%, but together the small parties exceeded 10% for the first time. At 43.3%, the voter turnout was just over the all-time low in the previous European election in Germany (43.0%).
The Pirate Party Germany, commonly known as Pirates, is a political party in Germany founded in September 2006 at c-base. It states general agreement with the Swedish Piratpartiet as a party of the information society; it is part of the international movement of pirate parties and a member of the Pirate Parties International. In 2011/12, the party succeeded in attaining a high enough vote share to enter four state parliaments and the European Parliament. However, their popularity rapidly declined and by 2017 they had no representation in any of the German state parliaments. Their one European MEP, Julia Reda, has joined the Greens/EFA group.
Federal elections were held in Germany on 24 September 2017 to elect the members of the 19th Bundestag. At stake were all 598 seats in the Bundestag, as well as 111 overhang and leveling seats determined thereafter.
The European Parliament election of 2014 in Denmark was an election held in Denmark on 25 May 2014 to decide who would represent Denmark in the European Parliament (EP) from 2014 to 2019. The Danish People's Party with 26.6% of the votes became the largest party for the first time in a nationwide Danish election.
The Communist Party of Kenya (CPK) is a political party in Kenya.
The next German federal election for the 20th Bundestag will regularly be held between August and October 2021.
The next Italian general election is due to be held no later than 28 May 2023.
In the run-up to the next Italian general election, various organisations have been carrying out opinion polling to gauge voting intention.
