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Will the plenary hall in the Reichstag building soon be bursting at the seams?
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
"The range of plausible possible Bundestag sizes runs from around 650 to more than 1000": The electoral law expert Robert Vehrkamp does not consider a further enlargement of the Bundestag to be ruled out after the election on September 26th.
That said the expert from the Bertelsmann Foundation of the news agency dpa.
Vehrkamp is a member of the commission set up by the Bundestag to reform electoral law and modernize parliamentary work. According to him, however, an exact prediction is not possible. »What is often overlooked in the discussion: It doesn't just depend on the second vote result. How many overhang seats there will be depends at least as much on the splitting of votes. And the splitting behavior is even more unpredictable than the allocation of second votes. "
For example, the Greens could get about twice as many second votes as in the 2017 election. "But we don't know what the splitting behavior of the Greens will look like." give it "an enormous leverage effect," said Vehrkamp. »Then, depending on the scenario, you can quickly reach 880, 950 or, in extreme cases, even over 1000 mandates. It doesn't have to happen that way, but it is possible. ”In view of the size of the Bundestag, he described the current electoral law as very risky.
Vehrkamp used three different splitting scenarios to calculate the size of the Bundestag from the latest ARD “Germany trend” from August 5th.
According to the survey, the CDU / CSU had 27, the Greens 19, the SPD 18, the FDP twelve, the AfD ten and the Left six percent of the vote.
Depending on the scenario, there are 695, 851 or 978 MPs.
Vehrkamp: Big Bundestag reduces political ability
The size of the Bundestag has an enormous impact on its ability to work and politics, said the election researcher.
"A Bundestag that is too large worsens the quality of political operations." Even the formation of a government could be influenced by it.
"The larger the parliamentary groups, the more difficult it could be to organize tight majorities and keep them stable for the duration of the legislative period."
The standard size of the Bundestag is 598 seats.
Since the 2017 election, it has had 709 members - more than ever before.
At the end of August 2020, the grand coalition agreed on an electoral reform in two steps in a laborious compromise.
In the first stage for the federal election on September 26, only minor changes were made.
So it remains at the number of 299 constituencies.
Overhang mandates from a party are to be partially offset against their list mandates.
If the standard size of the Bundestag of 598 seats is exceeded, up to three overhang seats should not be compensated for by compensation seats.
Experts doubt that it will be possible to downsize Parliament in this way.
In April the Union and the SPD agreed to set up a commission to reform electoral law.
fek / dpa