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Electoral rules and legislative

turnover: Evidence from
Germany's mixed electoral
system
Philip Manow
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To cite this article: Philip Manow (2007): Electoral rules and legislative turnover:
Evidence from Germany's mixed electoral system, West European Politics, 30:1, 195-207

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MPIfG Journal Article

Philip Manow: Electoral Rules and Legislative Turnover: Evidence from Germany's Mixed Electoral System. In: West European
Politics, 30(1), 195-207. (2007). Routledge
The original publication is available at the publishers web site: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402380601019852
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 West European Politics,
Vol. 30, No. 1, 195 207, January 2007

RESEARCH NOTE

Electoral Rules and Legislative

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Turnover: Evidence from Germanys

Mixed Electoral System
PHILIP MANOW

Germany has a mixed electoral system which combines a nominal vote with simple
majority in single-member districts and regional closed-list PR. Studies on the eects of
electoral rules therefore nd in the German system a testing ground that holds constant
many contextual factors, although the possibility of mutual contamination of electoral
rules prevents the measurement of pure eects. The inuence that electoral rules have
on the chances of re-election recently has attracted increased scholarly interest. This
article analyses parliamentary turnover for all 16 German federal elections since 1949.
The study reports much lower re-election prospects for German members of parliament
than previous studies, but conrms earlier ndings as to the impact of electoral rules on
turnover: direct candidates have higher chances of being re-elected than list-candidates;
being double-listed signicantly increases the prospect of re-election; and parliamentary
turnover increases with the length of the term.

The German electoral system is the prototype of a mixed electoral system

that combines regional closed-list PR with a nominal plurality vote in single-
member districts (Nohlen 1978; Klingemann and Wessels 2001; Scarrow
2001; Shugart and Wattenberg 2001; Saalfeld 2005). About half of the seats
of the German parliament, the Bundestag, are assigned to candidates who
gain a relative majority of direct (nominal) votes in one of the currently
299 single-member electoral districts. The other half are distributed among
the parties according to the relative vote share that the regional party lists
receive after subtracting the number of seats already won by direct
candidates. The German electoral system therefore provides all those who
are interested in the eects of electoral rules, in particular those interested in
the dierences between list-PR and the nominal vote in single-member
districts, with an almost ideal testing ground. This article takes up one topic
of this debate that has met with considerable interest recently, namely
whether and how electoral rules aect legislative turnover, i.e. the re-election
prospects of members of parliament. Recent research suggests that

Correspondence Address: pm@mpifg.de

ISSN 0140-2382 Print/1743-9655 Online 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01402380601019852
 196 P. Manow

re-election prospects dier substantially between proportional and major-

itarian electoral systems, with legislative turnover apparently being much
higher in the former than in the latter (Matland and Studlar 2004). Studying
the likely re-election of German MPs also allows the eect of another
feature of Germanys electoral system to be assessed, namely the possibility
of double listing, which apparently also increases incumbency return rates
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(Matland and Studlar 2004: 102, 104).1

This article analyses legislative turnover of German direct and list
candidates for all the 16 federal elections held so far in post-war Germany
between 1949 and 2005. A case study framework that analyses the eects of
electoral rules in one mixed electoral system has one important methodo-
logical advantage over a comparative research design: it allows a number of
intervening variables (e.g. district size, term length or other country or
context specics) to be kept constant. A case study therefore allows us to
estimate the eects of single electoral rules more precisely. Moreover,
analysing all 16 German post-war elections helps us to avoid selection bias,
which may result if we select particular and perhaps non-representative
elections to calculate the German turnover rate (see more on this below). A
potential disadvantage of a case study of a mixed electoral system lies in the
danger of possibly observing contaminated eects (Cox and Schoppa
2002). Yet mutual contamination of electoral rules should not seriously
aect my ndings since neither the specic incentives for ticket splitting
(Bawn 1999) nor a partys interest in nominating candidates even in
hopeless districts (in the expectation that this will improve its performance
in the PR ballot) should inuence the re-election probabilities of direct and
list candidates dierently. Of course, by analysing the eect of double listing
my study already takes into account one important interaction eect
between the list and the nominal vote, which has no equivalent in either pure
PR or pure single-member district plurality systems.
This research note is structured as follows. The following section discusses
two straightforward denitions of legislative turnover and reports turnover
rates for all general elections to the German Bundestag since 1949. In the
third, I show how re-election prospects have diered between direct and list
candidates in Germanys mixed-member electoral system. I also inquire
whether double-listed candidates have more chance of being re-elected than
either direct or list candidates. The nal section concludes the research note.

Legislative Turnover in Germany, 19492005

Before reporting turnover rates, we need to give a precise denition as to
what turnover is and just how, exactly, we are to measure it. Turnover can
be broadly dened as the proportion of membership that changes from one
election to the next (Matland and Studlar 2004: 92). For the exact
calculation of turnover rates, however, we need a more precise denition. I
propose to dene turnover as the share of those who either do not return to
 German Electoral Rules and Legislative Turnover 197

the subsequent parliament or are not re-elected. This leads to a broad and a
narrow denition of turnover. Legislative turnover is either dened broadly
as comprising all who have been members of parliamentt but are no longer
members of parliamentt1 (turnover rate 1 7 return rate), or it is dened
more narrowly as comprising all who have been elected to parliamentt but
failed to be re-elected to parliamentt1 (turnover rate 1 7 re-election rate).
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Whereas the rst denition includes all those who were not elected but
became members of parliament during the term (in Germany the so-called
Nachrucker, i.e. substitutes who replace MPs who leave parliament during
the term for whatever reason),2 the second denition excludes them. The
dierence is non-trivial (see Table 1). For instance, during the 12th term of
the Bundestag (199094) 10 members of parliament died and 27 resigned
and these vacancies were lled from party lists.3
Both denitions have straightforward counting rules: the return rate can
be calculated by counting the number of MPs sitting in parliament on the
last day of the previous parliament and the rst day of the next parliament,
with the total number of seats in the previous parliament as the divisor. The
re-election rate reports the percentage of incumbents who have been elected
at one general election and are re-elected at the next general election, i.e.
who were members of parliament on the rst day of the previous and on the
rst day of the next parliament.4
The basis of my calculation is a data set that contains information on each
of the 3,327 MPs who sat in the German Bundestag between 1949 and 2005
(Wissenschaftliche Dienste 1998, together with additions for the 14th, 15th

T ABL E 1
R ET UR N AN D RE -EL EC T IO N R ATE S I N G E RM AN Y S 1 6 G EN ER AL E LE CT I ON S

V VI
I II III IV Return rate Re-election rate
Term Returned MPs Re-elected MPs Seats (IIt/IVt 1) (IIIt/IVt 1)
1st (194953) 410
2nd (195357) 262 235 509 63.9 57.3
3rd (195761) 351 336 519 69.0 66.0
4th (196165) 386 367 521 74.4 70.7
5th (196569) 376 350 518 72.2 67.2
6th (196972) 347 335 518 67.0 64.7
7th (197276) 368 346 518 71.0 66.8
8th (197680) 392 381 518 75.7 73.6
9th (198083) 379 367 519 73.2 70.8
10th (198387) 418 411 520 80.5 79.2
11th (198790) 393 390 519 75.6 75.0
12th (199094) 417 351 662 80.3 67.6
13th (199498) 452 443 672 68.3 66.9
14th (19982002) 474 467 669 70.5 69.5
15th (20022005) 397 390 603 59.3 58.3
16th (2005) 436 426 614 72.3 70.6
Average 71.5 68.3
Sources: Schindler 1998; Wissenschaftliche Dienste 1998; Feldkamp 2005, and own calculations.
 198 P. Manow

and 16th terms by the author). The data set contains the name and party
aliation of each MP, his or her date of entry and exit, and whether the MP
was elected directly or via regional party lists. This rich data set allows me to
reconstruct parliamentary careers in the German Bundestag in great detail.
I start with some descriptive statistics. The 3,327 MPs occupied a total of
9,512 seats in 16 legislative terms;5 5,207 (54.7 per cent) seats were lled
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from party lists.6 The average German MP remains in parliament for

3,612 days (N 3,188).7 Since the parliamentary term of the German
Bundestag lasts four years starting from the day the parliament constitutes
itself for the rst time (Article 39, Section 1 Basic Law (Grundgesetz)), this
means that the average Bundestagsabgeordneter remains about two-and-a-
half terms in parliament. In order to obtain a more precise estimate we can
count the total number of terms and divide this by the number of MPs,
which gives an average parliamentary tenure of 2.86 terms. As expected,
German direct and list candidates dier considerably with respect to
tenure: direct candidates stay for almost three terms (2.92 terms), list
candidates for only a little more than two terms (2.31 terms; for more details
see below).
But how likely is it for a member of parliament to be re-elected? Table 1
presents the return and re-election rates for all German elections between
1949 and 2005. At least two important pieces of information stand out in
Table 1. First, legislative turnover varies quite a bit, being relatively high in
the early years and then increasing again after the 1990s. Second, average
legislative turnover in Germany has been substantially lower than
previously thought. In Matlands and Studlars (2004) pioneering 25-
country study, in which Germany is included with three elections, Germany
is ranked third with a return rate of 78.7 per cent. It clusters with countries
like the US, Australia, Ireland and the UK, all countries with electoral
systems that are more majoritarian in character. Based on my data and on
the less strict return rate,8 the German electoral system would now be
ranked in 9th place instead, and it would cluster with a number of other
countries with PR electoral systems like Sweden, Malta, Belgium or Iceland
(Matland and Studlar 2004: 93).
What might explain the dierences in the reported return rates? Much has
to do with the dierent time span covered by the Matland and Studlar study
(for Germany: 197687) and my own (19492005). First, as can be read
from Table 1, the early terms of the German Bundestag were characterised
by a relatively high level of legislative turnover. This might have a simple
cause. From the 1st to the 4th parliament, the number of parties represented
in the German Bundestag decreased from 19 to three (plus three
independents), a consolidation that presumably had an inuence on overall
legislative turnover. Secondly, the period after German unication saw
higher levels of legislative turnover although the rst all-German elections
in 1990 produced an exceptionally high return rate of slightly more than
80 per cent.9 Increased post-unication turnover might have something to
 German Electoral Rules and Legislative Turnover 199

do with the fact that the majority of East German voters are only
slowly becoming politically socialised into an all-German party system
dominated by West German parties. Lower party aliation results in a
greater willingness to switch votes, and voter volatility is considerably
higher in the new, Eastern German states (see Rattinger 1994; Gabriel
1997). But higher voter volatility is likely to lead to higher legislative
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turnover.10
However, increased turnover is not driven by lower party aliation in the
east alone. Although electoral volatility is undoubtedly higher there,
volatility is not only a regional but also a secular phenomenon that aects
the west as well (Becker and Saalfeld 2005). It is therefore questionable
whether increased turnover after 1990 can be explained solely by German
unication. If we assume that the dissolution of traditional socio-economic
milieus and the weakening of ties between voters and parties is a trend that
other Western democracies experience as well, a comparative study risks
underestimating legislative turnover in Germany when it restricts analysis of
German elections to the pre-unication period while taking into account
elections up to the mid-1990s in other Western democracies (see Matland
and Studlar 2004: 92, note 34, and 108).
Finally, an additional reason for the higher reported German return rate
in the Matland and Studlar study seems to lie in the authors specic choice
of elections. The three elections analysed (elections to the 9th, 10th and 11th
terms of the Bundestag, with the 1976 election as the base year) have all led
to higher than average return rates, with the election to the 10th German
parliament standing out among all 16 elections as the one with the highest
return rate ever. This election was a remarkable outlier because the 9th term
of the German Bundestag ended with an early dissolution of parliament
after only 29 months instead of the regular 48 months. But the shorter the
term, the higher, ceteris paribus, the return rate (Matland and Studlar 2004:
102). In fact, the shortest term in the post-war period produced the highest
return rate of the post-war period.11
However, taking into account all 16 German post-war elections does
not alter Matland and Studlars ndings about the determinants of
legislative turnover on the contrary, it reinforces them. Since Professors
Matland and Studlar were so kind as to provide me with their original
data set (see opening acknowledgement) I was able to replicate their
results and rerun their multivariate analysis with the additional data on
12 German elections. Table 2 compares the original ndings with the
replication results.
The replication strengthens all the ndings of the original study, with one
exception: as was to be expected, with higher turnover in German elections
the double-listings coecient loses a little in strength (Hypothesis 3),
although it remains statistically signicant (at the 1 per cent level). All of the
other electoral system variables gain in strength, and the t of the model
even improves slightly.12 The major ndings of the comparative study are
 200 P. Manow

T ABL E 2
D E T ER M IN A N T S O F T U R N O V E R A R E P L I C A T I O N OF T H E M A T LA N D /
S TU D L AR A N A L Y S IS W I T H AD D I T IO N A L D A T A FO R 1 2 G E R M A N
E LECT I ONS 1

Original Replication with

model additional data
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(Constant) 4.198 (1.33) 3.234 (1.02)

H1 PR system 9.852 (3.98)** 11.630 (4.46)**
H2 PR-STV (single transferable vote) 73.580 (1.37) 74.857 (1.89)
H2 SNTV (single non-transferable vote) 73.097 (1.00) 74.317 (1.36)
H2 PR-preferential vote 70.259 (0.16) 70.526 (0.32)
H3 Double listings 78.493 (2.49)** 77.423 (3.27)**
H4 Electoral volatility 0.254 (5.66)** 0.246 (5.39)**
H5 Time (months) 0.365 (7.23)** 0.397 (7.82)**
H6 Seats controlled by traditional conservatives 70.020 (0.42) 70.008 (0.17)
H7 Seats controlled by leftist parties 0.034 (0.76) 70.019 (0.39)
H8 Canada 14.883 (4.31)** 14.852 (4.17)**
New democracy 6.135 (2.46)* 7.047 (2.72)**
Portugal 11.267 (3.17)** 9.542 (2.62)*
Observations 116 128
Adjusted R-squared 0.70 0.71
Note: Absolute value of t statistics in parentheses; *signicant at 5%; **signicant at 1%.
1
Cf. Matland and Studlar (2004: 104, Table 3).

therefore conrmed: list PR leads to higher legislative turnover, the length

of the parliamentary term varies positively with turnover, and double listing
increases re-election prospects.
The following section investigates whether list candidates in Germanys
mixed-member electoral system are more at risk than direct candidates when
it comes to not returning to the Bundestag, and whether the possibility of
double listing lowers turnover rates.

Direct, List and Double-Listed Candidates: Do Their Electoral

Fates Dier?
Since the comparative evidence suggests that electoral rules have quite a
substantial impact on legislative turnover, we should expect that dierent
types of candidates in Germanys mixed electoral system face dierent
electoral fates. This is indeed what candidate-type-specic return rates
conrm. As Table 3 shows, list candidates are much less likely to be re-
elected than direct candidates. The share of list candidates among all
Bundestag members is 54.7 per cent, but their share among those who return
to parliament is on average only 48.4 per cent (see Table 3; see note 6 for an
explanation of why the mix between list and direct candidates is not 50:50).
Table 3 is in line with what we already know about the dierent lengths of
parliamentary tenure of list and direct candidates reported above. The same
picture emerges once we look at survival estimates for both types of
candidates (see Stata 2003; Cleves et al. 2004). The higher electoral risks of
list candidates are clearly visible in Figure 1.
 German Electoral Rules and Legislative Turnover 201

T ABL E 3
T HE RE TU RN RAT E OF LI ST CA ND I D ATE S

Term Returned MPs Returned via the party list %

st
1 (194953)
2nd (195357) 262 114 43.5
3rd (195761) 351 171 48.7
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4th (196165) 386 190 49.2

5th (196569) 376 197 52.4
6th (196972) 347 175 50.4
7th (197276) 368 181 49.2
8th (197680) 392 201 51.3
9th (198083) 379 187 49.3
10th (198387) 418 207 49.5
11th (198790) 392 189 48.2
12th (199094) 417 190 45.6
13th (199498) 452 205 45.4
14th (19982002) 474 238 50.2
15th (20022005) 397 196 49.4
16th (2005) 434 187 43.1
Average 48.4

FI G U R E 1
S U R V I VA L E S T I M A T E S F O R GE R M A N M P s , 1 94 9 2 0 0 5 , L I S T V E R S U S D I R E C T
C A N D ID A T E S ( I N D A Y S )

How much these dierences in tenure reect voluntary or involuntary exit

is hard to say. A relatively strong indicator of an involuntary exit is if
somebody stands for re-election but fails. But, historically, only a quarter
(24.1 per cent) of those who did not make it into the next parliament
actually stood for re-election. For the other three-quarters of candidates,
 202 P. Manow

we cannot be sure whether they did not want to run again or they wanted to
run but were not nominated. However, what seems clear from the data is
that, for a German MP, his or her nomination is presumably the far more
critical event than the election itself, the selectorate being more important
than the electorate which would give a partial explanation for the strong
role that parties continue to play in Germanys electoral system (see Shugart
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2001; Shugart and Wattenberg 2001). Among those who stood for re-
election but failed, list candidates and direct candidates account for almost
equal shares (21 per cent and 23 per cent respectively) with double-listed
candidates representing the largest share (with over 55 per cent).
This brings us to the eects of double listing. First of all we would like to
know how widespread double listing actually is. A little more than one-
quarter of all candidates in German general elections both run in a district
and have a place on a party list (Statistisches Bundesamt 2005: 1617). This
share has remained fairly stable since the rst Bundestag elections. Once we
look only at those actually elected, however, the number of double-listed
MPs increases strongly, from around 50 per cent in the 1950s and 1960s to
more than 80 per cent today. This already might indicate higher chances for
double-listed candidates to be elected and re-elected. Yet, this number
certainly is inated. We get a more reliable estimate if we subtract those
candidates placed at the lower, unpromising ranks of a party list or those
being a direct candidate in a district that is a partys stronghold.13 This leads
to a more realistic share of truly double-listed members of parliament of
around 50 per cent.
Does being double-listed improve re-election prospects? This might not be
as self-evident as one might think. Clearly, being double-listed ought never
to hurt, but only improve, a candidates chance of being re-elected. But
eects may be negligible because many list ranks are unsafe and many
district races unpromising for the respective candidate. Parties often place
candidates on unsafe list ranks or nominate them in unpromising districts
out of symbolic or aesthetic reasons: parties want to submit complete lists
and want to be present in every electoral district, even in those districts
where their candidate has virtually no chance of winning. For instance, the
German Liberal Party (FDP) always seeks to nominate direct candidates in
every district, even though it gained no direct mandate between 1957 and
1990.14 It is therefore not clear whether being double-listed really improves
re-election prospects signicantly (see Table 4).
Restricting our analysis to the sub-sample of truly double-listed candi-
dates (meaning subtracting candidates with high list ranks or those running
in safe districts), can we conrm that being double-listed enhances re-
election probabilities? Since information about candidates exact list rank is
available only from the 8th term of the Bundestag on, the following analysis
is restricted to the period from 1976 to 2005. Table 4 reports the shares of
double-listed candidates among all those candidates returning to the next
parliament. When compared to the total share of double-listed candidates
 German Electoral Rules and Legislative Turnover 203

among the members of the previous parliament, we see that the re-election
probability of double-listed candidates has indeed been signicantly higher
in all elections.
Another more indirect way of estimating the eect of double listings is to
look at the re-election prospects of those MPs who have always been elected
into the Bundestag as either direct or list candidates and at the re-election
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prospects of those who have used both paths (see Table 5). This is not a
perfect indicator of double listing, but this approach avoids dening what
qualies as a true double listing. In order to secure comparability when
comparing parliamentary tenure of those with either pure or plural paths
into parliament, we need to restrict the sample to those MPs with at
least two terms in parliament since, by denition, one can only take both
paths into the German Bundestag if one has been re-elected at least once
(see Table 5 and Figure 2). Table 5 reports the average length of tenure
for these dierent types of candidates; Figure 2 displays the survival
estimates.
As is evident, being able to use both tracks into parliament signicantly
extends the time of membership in the Bundestag. To some extent this will
be a celebrity eect. On the one hand, the more prominent and well-known
a politician is, the more he or she is likely to win his or her district directly;
on the other hand, prominent politicians are too important for the party to

T ABL E 4
RE TURN R A T E O F D O U B L E - L I S T E D C A N D I D A TE S A N D S H A R E O F
D O U B L E - L IS T E D C A N D I D A T E S AM O N G A L L M P s , 1 9 7 6 2 0 0 5

I II III IV
No. of Returned MPs who Share of double listed Share of double
Term returned MPs were double-listed among returning MPs listed among all MPs
8th 30.7
9th 379 148 39.1 32.6
10th 418 189 45.2 36.7
11th 393 189 48.1 39.9
12th 417 241 57.8 43.8
13th 452 267 59.1 48.4
14th 474 311 65.6 49.9
15th 397 253 63.7

T ABL E 5
PA R LI A M EN TA R Y TE NU R E OF L I ST, D I R EC T , AN D DU A L TR A CK
C A N D I D A TE S W I T H A T L E A S T TW O T E R M S , 1 9 49 2 0 0 5

Average days in
parliament for those Number Number of
re-elected at least once of terms observations
Pure list candidates 4,297 3.5 919
Pure direct candidates 4,488 3.6 732
Dual track candidates 5,397 4.2 630
 204 P. Manow

FI G U R E 2
S U R V I V A L E ST IM AT E S FO R D U A L TR A CK C A N DI D A TE S AN D O T HE R S W I T H
A T L E A S T T W O T E R M S IN P A R L I A M E N T , 1 9 4 9 2 0 0 5 ( D A Y S )
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risk them failing to re-enter parliament and therefore they will also occupy a
relatively safe position on the regional party list. Again, we might rather
measure the eects of parties nomination strategies than the eects of
electoral rules as such. However, the clearly diering lengths of tenure for a
relatively high number of cases suggest that more than just a celebrity eect
is at work here.

Conclusion
This research note analysed legislative turnover in a prototypical mixed-
member electoral system, the German one. It reported return rates for
German members of parliament for all 16 elections that have so far taken
place in the Federal Republic. One central nding is that legislative turnover
is signicantly higher than previously reported. Whereas Germany was
qualied as an outlier in previous comparisons of legislative turnover, it now
seems to be much more in line with countries with similar electoral systems.
Generally, my case study of a mixed electoral system could conrm most
ndings from the comparative study of legislative turnover: list-PR leads to
higher legislative turnover; direct candidates have a higher chance of being
re-elected to the Bundestag; being double-listed apparently enhances the
electoral chances of members of parliament; shorter terms increase incum-
bency return rates. The empirical evidence presented also showed that,
under the German electoral system, the nomination seems to be far more
important than the election itself. Given that parties have more authority
 German Electoral Rules and Legislative Turnover 205

when compiling a party list than when nominating district candidates, the
dierent electoral fate of direct and list candidates might have more to do
with party strategies than with voter decisions.

Acknowledgements
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Helpful comments by Andre Kaiser, Peter Mair, Richard Matland, Donley

Studlar, Thomas Zittel and two anonymous referees are gratefully
acknowledged. I am also very grateful that Professors Matland and Studlar
were kind enough to provide me with their original data set on legislative
turnover, which allowed me to rerun their analysis with my additional
turnover data.

Notes
1. Given that the empirical evidence on which this nding of the Matland and Studlar study is
based is rather small (only two of the 25 countries covered by the study allow for double
listing (Malta and Germany) and the study covers only three elections in each country), it
seems worthwhile to check against additional data whether double listing does indeed
improve the prospects of being re-elected.
2. There are no by-elections in Germany. MPs leaving parliament are substituted from the
party lists.
3. I count a total of 689 substitutes or non-elected members for all 16 terms (on average
46 MPs per term), including the 144 MPs sent to the Bundestag from the East German
Volkskammer in September 1990 (see note 9) but excluding the MPs sent by the Berlin
Senate.
4. One is confronted with a further subtlety when calculating return or re-election rates: how
to treat those members of parliament whose career has been interrupted for one, two or
even three terms? Since I calculate return or re-election rates by looking at two subsequent
elections/parliaments only, I treat MPs with an interrupted spell of membership as new.
The Datenhandbuch zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundestags treats these MPs as returning
and therefore reports a slightly lower rate of legislative turnover (Schindler 1998). Again,
dierences are not that trivial: over all 16 terms, 129 MPs returned to parliament after a
spell of one, two or even three terms of absence.
5. Average total number of seats in the Bundestag is 551. The higher gure that results by
dividing 9,512 seats by 16 terms (594) is explained by the fact that we have double
counting of MPs whenever an MP leaves parliament during the term and is replaced by a
list candidate (a so-called Nachrucker).
6. Why does the share of list candidates fail to equal the number of directly elected members
of parliament? Three factors explain the admittedly slight deviation. First, the German
electoral system does not have by-elections. If an MP resigns or dies during the term, he or
she will be substituted by the highest-ranking candidate on the party list who failed to make
it into parliament at the last election. Second, until 1990, Berlins members of parliament
were not elected by the citizens of Berlin, but instead were elected by the parties in the city
parliament. I have coded these MPs as list candidates as well. Third, during the process of
German unication, the East German parliament (Volkskammer) sent delegates to the
Bundestag before general elections were held in a unied Germany in October that year.
Again, I coded these MPs as list candidates.
7. Dierences to the total N in the data set (3,327) are due to right censoring.
8. This is the denition Matland and Studlar themselves seem to follow (see Matland and
Studlar 2004: 923).
 206 P. Manow

9. The reason for this high return rate is that on 28 September 1990 the East German
Volkskammer sent 144 members of parliament to the Bundestag. General elections in
unied Germany were held on 2 December. In other words, these MPs enjoyed a tenure of
little more than two months. Yet, short terms lead to high return rates (Matland and
Studlar 2004: 102). At the same time, the total number of seats in the Bundestag increased
from 519 in the 11th term to 662 seats in the 12th term as a reection of the larger Germany.
10. The relatively high return rates in the most recent September 2005 election do not really
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indicate a reversal of this trend because the 15th term of the German Bundestag ended
early, after only 36 months. Given that the decision of Chancellor Schroder to call
new elections was challenged before the German Constitutional Court and the court did not
issue its ruling before early August (the election was held in September), the election
campaign was extremely short, and neither parties nor candidates had much time to prepare
themselves. It seems safe to assume that all this contributed to the relatively high return
rate. Apart from the 2005 election, post-unication elections reveal relatively low return
rates.
11. Selecting the election to the 10th German Bundestag is unproblematic for a multi-
variate analysis, such as the one on page 104 of the Matland and Studlar (2004) study,
in which the authors can control for the time that has elapsed between two general
elections.
12. Some of the changes in the coecients are not simply due to the integration of the
additional German data. I have also corrected some errors in the M/S time variable
(see Matland and Studlar 2004: 108, Table A): the period between the 3rd and 4th Danish
elections was 44 not 34 months; the period between the 2nd and 3rd French elections was
39 not 27 months; the period between the 5th and 6th elections in Portugal was 51 not
39 months; the period between the 5th and 6th elections in Japan was 43 not 31 months; and
the 4th German election was in January 1987 and not in November, so therefore the period
between the 3rd and 4th elections was 47 not 56 months. I have also made some minor
changes for Austria (2nd election was in May), Italy (4th election was in June), the UK (the
5th election was in April), and Portugal (the 1st election was in October). See Mackie and
Rose (1991), and Internet resources.
13. I code a district as a stronghold if a party gained more than 55 per cent of the vote in the
last general election (see Schindler 1998). I code list-ranks higher than 10 as unsafe.
14. Presence is not an entirely symbolic issue, though, since the presence of a direct candidate
in a district seems to increase a partys PR-ballot district vote.

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