After an eventful run-up, election day is here! From 8am this morning German citizens can cast their ballots for a new government. But what’s the timeline for the rest of the day, and when can we expect an election result?
The federal election (Bundestagswahl) 2025 is the 10th election in reunified Germany and the fourth snap election in the country’s history.
Confirmed once the traffic light coalition government collapsed in November and incumbent chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party) lost a confidence vote in December, the 14-week campaign trail has been compact.
According to a FOCUS magazine poll of administrative bodies in Germany’s 16 federal states, there will be more eligible, first-time voters in this German federal election than any other in the country’s postwar history.
The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) estimates that at least 59,2 million people of Germany’s 84,4 million population are eligible to vote this time around.
According to the German constitution (Grundgesetz), elections are always to be held on a Sunday. Here’s how the day will go:
Over the course of the day, around 675.000 election volunteers will help organise queues, hand out ballots and count them once polling stations close at 6pm. At this point, most people will probably be eagerly awaiting the first forecasts, but when will the first results become available?
Soon after the polling stations close in Germany at 6pm, the Federal Returning Officer will release the provisional election results.
These provisional results are based on a representative sample of anonymous post-voting surveys (sometimes called an “exit poll”) and the interim results published by local voting districts.
The projection is normally made public around 6.15pm and is traditionally announced on public broadcasting channels ARD and ZDF.
While the exit poll is a good indication of which way the vote might swing, it’s not a final result, with the count set to continue throughout the night. When an electoral district has counted all of its votes - this usually happens in the early hours of the morning - the local returning officer will pass these results to the federal returning officer.
The latter will then use all of these collected results to announce a preliminary final outcome of the federal election. This will happen sometime during the night or early in the morning. In the 2021 federal election, the preliminary result was announced at 6am on Monday.
By around 6am on the morning following the election, enough votes have usually been counted for the federal returning officer to announce the winner. However, it takes a couple of weeks for the official, final election result to be announced, to account for counts or recounts.
For example, in 2017, the election took place on September 24, but the final result wasn’t announced until October 12. In 2013, the election was on September 22, and the result was announced on October 9.
The newly-elected parliament (Bundestag) has to convene no later than 30 days after the election. But this does not necessarily mean there will be a new government by then.
After the election, the biggest parties will begin coalition talks and negotiations - a protracted process that can take several months. The parties will need to form a coalition that holds a majority of the Bundestag’s 630 seats.
Once a coalition has been formed, they will select a chancellor, who then needs to be approved by the Bundestag with an absolute majority of over 50 percent before they can name cabinet ministers.
When all of the new ministers have been officially appointed by the president and sworn in, the new government will take office. Until then, Olaf Scholz will continue to hold the chancellorship in a caretaker capacity.
Election run-up polls have widely predicted a CDU / CSU win with Friedrich Merz filling the chancellorship. Read our article, What has the CDU promised to do if they win the German election? to find out more about what might be in store for Germany if the polls prove correct.
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