Talk:2012 North Rhine-Westphalia state election

5% threshold (for list and/or direct mandates?)

The article does not (yet) mention that there is a threshold of 5% or Fünf-Prozent-Hürde. However, it is not clear to me if a candidate, when gaining a simple majority in its own district (or Wahlkreis), obtains the seat if his party did not obtain 5% of all list votes in the state. I was looking at the official site: [1], and as far as my German is correct, I believe that the threshold does NOT to the distribution of those seats for each constituency? Evilbu (talk) 09:07, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

From my understanding, the 5% threshold is about the overall seats. If a party didn't get to 5% and still won a seat from first-past-the-post, thats when you get overhang seats to help get to the correct number of seats for each party that did get to the 5%. Kingjeff (talk) 20:08, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

On the website of the Regional direction for elections, there is a complete list of candidates, including 8 independent candidates ("Einzelbewerber / -innen") for the first-past-the-post seats. The article Grundmandat explains the system: if a party gets 3 direct mandates, it takes part into the sharing of seats according to the overall proportional results even if it got less than 5% (the PDS at the 1994 federal elections). But if it gets less than 3 direct mandates only these may seat in the parliament (federal or regional), the party does not benefit from the Zweistimme (the PDS at the 2002 federal elections). --Minorities observer (talk) 13:04, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Simply put, if you "win" your district, you get that seat one way or the other, although this is fairly rare for the small and tiny parties or independents, there is also the possibility of parties with minority protection that always get seats relative to their overall success, regardless of whether they got 5% or not, such as the Danish minority party in Schleswig-Holstein, although obviously those seats will be drawn from their respective party lists, as opposed to a local victory of a specific candidate. Due to the two-votes system, in which you vote for your preferred local candidate with your first vote and your preferred party with your second vote, smaller parties generally encourage their voters to give them their second vote, and don't mind if you give your first vote to their bigger allies. So a voter on the center-left side of the spectrum, voting for an SPD/Grüne coalition, might give their first vote to the SPD (The major party in this constellation with a decent chance to win the local election), and their second to the Green party (To help them get their list candidates in). So generally the direct candidates tend to come from the two biggest parties, with few exceptions. hope that helped. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.134.139.187 (talk) 01:38, 17 May 2012 (UTC)