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Election Night in Germany
German federal elections take place on a Sunday, and polling stations close at 6 p.m. At that moment, the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF publish their Prognose, an estimate based on exit polls of voters leaving polling stations. Over the evening, Hochrechnungen, projections based on samples of counted votes, refine the picture, and the preliminary official result usually follows during the night. Because a party needs at least five percent of the party-list vote to enter the Bundestag in most cases, a small party hovering around five percent can decide whether a majority is possible at all. Single-party majorities are rare, so election night is followed by exploratory talks, Sondierungsgespräche, and then formal coalition negotiations, which can take weeks or months. Early dissolution of the Bundestag and new elections are possible only under narrow conditions set by the Basic Law. A fixture of election night is the Elefantenrunde, a televised discussion with the leaders of the main parties. It is famous for the art of interpreting any result as a success: losses are described as a result that is not satisfactory, or one that will be analyzed calmly. Political reporters usually present their figures in percentage points, which is not the same as percent.