Kampfabstimmung, a battle vote, is the German word for a vote in which both sides have roughly equal chances. The best-known example came at the SPD party congress in Mannheim on 16 November 1995. For the first time in the party’s history, a chairman who stood for re-election was voted out. In a battle vote, the delegates chose Oskar Lafontaine, who had declared his candidacy only on the day of the vote, over the incumbent, Rudolf Scharping. Scharping was elected deputy chairman and remained leader of the SPD group in the Bundestag.
politics
A Vote of Conscience
The Basic Law says that members of the Bundestag are an Aufträge und Weisungen nicht gebunden und nur ihrem Gewissen unterworfen, not bound by orders and instructions, and subject only to their conscience. On some questions, the party leaders ask every member to decide freely. In the week before 30 June 2017, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the vote on marriage for same-sex couples should be such a decision of conscience. On 30 June the Bundestag passed the law by 393 votes to 226, with 4 abstentions. At least 70 members of Merkel’s own CDU/CSU group, almost one in four, voted yes. Merkel herself voted no. Für mich ist die Ehe im Grundgesetz die Ehe von Mann und Frau. For me, marriage in the Basic Law is the marriage of a man and a woman.
A Remark About a Face
In September 2011, the CDU member of parliament Wolfgang Bosbach said he would vote against the expansion of the euro rescue fund. Days before the vote, the head of the Chancellery, Ronald Pofalla, told him: Ich kann deine Fresse nicht mehr sehen. I can’t stand the sight of your face any more. The remark became public, and Pofalla apologized. The Tagesspiegel called it a Verbalentgleisung, a verbal derailment.
The Party Says No to Its Leader
On 21 January 2018, the SPD held a special party conference in Bonn. The party leader, Martin Schulz, asked the delegates to approve coalition talks with the CDU and CSU. He called the vote a Schlüsselmoment, a key moment. Kevin Kühnert, the 28-year-old leader of the party’s youth organization, led the opposition from the floor. Heute einmal ein Zwerg sein, um künftig wieder Riesen sein zu können. Be a dwarf for once today, so that we can be giants again in the future. The delegates approved the talks by 362 votes to 279.
One Team Across the Aisle
FC Bundestag is the football club of the members of the Bundestag. It was founded in the 1960s, and members of all political camps play in it. In 2018 the CDU member Johannes Steiniger wrote that members of otherwise competing parties form one team across party lines. In March 2024, the club’s members’ meeting declared membership of the AfD incompatible with membership of the club. In March 2025, the Berlin regional court declared that resolution void on formal grounds. The club’s statutes allow any member of the Bundestag to join, and a resolution of the members’ meeting is not enough to change that.
Fifty-Eight Calls to Order
The president of the Bundestag can call a member to order by name for a breach of the order or the dignity of the house. A personal insult is the classic case. Herbert Wehner, the long-time leader of the SPD group, holds the record. He received 58 calls to order in almost 34 years in parliament. He once called the CDU member Jürgen Todenhöfer Hodentöter, a crude pun on the name. In the 2021–2025 term, the Bundestag issued more than 100 calls to order. By mid-September 2025, six months into its term, the new Bundestag had issued 13, and 12 of them went to members of the AfD.
State by State
The Bundesrat usually votes by show of hands. If one state asks, the vote is taken by calling the states one by one. Die Länder werden in alphabetischer Reihenfolge aufgerufen. The states are called in alphabetical order. The most disputed call came on 22 March 2002, on the Immigration Act. When Brandenburg was called, Alwin Ziel of the SPD answered Ja, and directly after him the interior minister, Jörg Schönbohm of the CDU, answered Nein. The president of the Bundesrat, Klaus Wowereit, stated: Damit stelle ich fest, dass das Land Brandenburg nicht einheitlich abgestimmt hat. He then asked Minister-President Manfred Stolpe, who answered yes, and Wowereit counted Brandenburg as yes. On 18 December 2002, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that Brandenburg had not voted uniformly, and it declared the law void.
Women and Men in Turn
The Green Party’s women’s statute sets the order of speakers at its meetings. Its long-standing federal wording reads: Redelisten werden getrennt geführt, Frauen und Männer reden abwechselnd. Lists of speakers are kept separately, and women and men speak in turn. Ist die Redeliste der Frauen erschöpft, ist die Versammlung zu befragen, ob die Debatte fortgesetzt werden soll. When the women’s list is used up, the assembly is asked whether the debate should go on. The Cologne Greens write that the quota became binding in 1986, with the women’s statute. In 2023 the Greens in a Bremen district council proposed the same order for its meetings: the floor in der Reihenfolge der Wortmeldungen abwechselnd Frauen und Männern, alternately to women and men, in the order of the requests.
Heckling on the Record
Speaking without the floor happens even in the Bundestag. Members call out remarks during speeches. These Zwischenrufe, interjections, are part of the debate, and they are not lost. Auch Zwischenrufe und Bemerkungen sind dort festgehalten. Interjections and remarks are recorded in the official minutes too. The stenographers identify who called out, because the video does not always show it. In 2018, sixteen stenographers worked on a sitting day, each relieved by a colleague every five minutes.
The Clock in the Debate
On 9 February 2025, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his challenger Friedrich Merz met for a 90-minute television debate on ZDF and Das Erste. The broadcasters’ rules said that speaking time would be measured in the control room. If the time became clearly unequal, the moderators would raise it. In the three-way debate of 2021, Annalena Baerbock of the Greens pointed out that the clock for her rival Olaf Scholz kept running while the moderators were speaking.