section_path: Political parties and candidates/Competing parties
section_name: Competing parties
paragraph_text: Competing parties
  
  A total of 41 parties have been approved to run in this election. A special case is "the Union" in which, due to a parallel development after World War II, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) only competes in Bavaria while the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) runs in all states except Bavaria. Since the late 1940s, the CDU and CSU form a long-standing alliance of conservative parties in Germany. Both parties always have a joint leading candidate and have a joint parliamentary group in the Bundestag, the CDU/CSU. Both parties run separately, though, and CSU has to pass the nationwide 5% threshold by itself. Their results are usually shown in added form after elections and in polls.
  
  Automatic nationwide approval is granted to so-called "established parties": those that have been continuously represented in the Bundestag with at least five members since the previous election (SPD, CDU and CSU, Greens, FDP, AfD, and Left) or those that have been continuously represented in any state parliament with at least five members since that state's last election (Alliance Germany, BSW, and Free Voters). These parties also do not need to submit signatures to support their nominations.
  
  Other political organizations constitute "non-established parties" and must petition the Federal Electoral Committee for approval to run in the election. The committee must determine whether these organizations meet the definition of a political party set forth by section 2 of the Political Parties Act: that it desires to influence politics and obtain parliamentary representation "either permanently or for an extended period", and in particular, that its "scope and stability...its number of members, and public profile provide sufficient guarantees of the seriousness of this objective". In addition, most of its members and board of directors must be German citizens, based in and managed from within the country.
  
  Thirty-one parties were approved but must submit signatures to support their nominations. Constituency nominations require 200 signatures of eligible voters residing within its boundaries. The number of signatures needed to file a state list is set at 0.1% of the state's eligible voting population at the previous election, with a maximum of 2,000. The 2023 electoral reform law added the restriction that parties can only run constituency candidates in states where it has a state list.
  
  The committee also determined the validity of a party's claim to represent a recognized minority, which not only exempts them from the five-percent hurdle but also the requirement to submit signatures. The SSW's claim was approved, while the claim of Die Sonstigen ("The Others") was not approved.
  
  On 22 January, Table.Media reported that an FDP member submitted complaints against the validity of 14 of the party's state lists (in all states except Berlin and Lower Saxony), alleging that voting on nominations was not conducted by secret ballot as required by federal law. Instead of filling out a pre-printed ballot, delegates wrote "yes", "no", "abstention", or a candidate's name on a blank sheet of paper while in their seats, which the complaint argued could lead to the ballot being seen by others or the delegate being identified by their handwriting. The electoral committees of several states confirmed they were investigating a complaint, while federal party leaders denied any laws were broken. All of the FDP's lists were ultimately approved. The state returning officer of Hesse, in calling the complaint "far-fetched", pointed to a 2017 court case that found that a minimum level of secrecy (e.g., getting up from one's seat or covering one's ballot with a hand) is sufficient in internal party votes.
  
  Ultimately, 29 of the 41 parties approved to run in the election submitted a valid state list in at least one state. In the table below, green indicates a party's state list has been approved, while red indicates a state list has been rejected. The number in each box indicates how many direct candidates the party ran in the indicated state. Parties are ordered by their results in the 2021 election, then alphabetically.