Just to clarify, in German elections you only vote for the party, not the person. If the party gets 20% of the vote, they get to fill 20% of the seats in parliament.
Each party maintains a list of people to fill the seats. If you are, say, Angela Merkel and lead the list - the only way you don’t get a seat is if the party receives no seats in the election (generally less than 5% of the vote).
OTOH, if you are 13th on the list and your party gets 14 seats - poof, your in!
IOW, the people didn’t specifically vote for those two individuals, they simply occupied the correct position on the list.
But we ARE talking about the Greens/Left here, so the voters may not care.
My 2 cents....
Good clarification—thanks for explaining.
Good post.
Thank you very much for your good explanation :-)
That really is a fault in the system, I think...
Interesting.
I didn’t know this.