Demographics of the New Bundestag

The MPs taking seats on Tuesday range in age from 23 to 84. The youngest is Luke Hoss, a student from the far-left Die Linke who has promised to give away most of his €11,000-a-month salary. The oldest is Alexander Gauland, a former journalist from the AfD who in 2018 downplayed Hitler and the Nazis as “just birdshit in our more than 1,000-year history”.

The gender inequality is lowest in the Greens, where women make up 61.2% of MPs, and highest in the AfD, where they make up 11.8%. Women are also greatly underrepresented in the centre right, accounting for 22.6% of MPs in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and 25% of MPs in the Christian Social Union (CSU).

Lawmakers of foreign descent are also disproportionately rare in the new parliament. The share of MPs with a migration background – those with at least one parent who was born without German citizenship – is 11.6%, according to estimates from the nonprofit group Mediendienst Integration, compared to about 30% in the general population.

German parliament sits for first time with AfD as main opposition