A candidate is a person who runs for a mandate or office in an election.
Top candidate
In a list election, the candidate who occupies the first place on the list is usually called the top candidate. However, parties such as Bündnis 90/Die Grünen or Die Linke often nominate two top candidates (also known as a top duo), who then usually occupy the first two places on the list. As a rule, the major political parties nominate there the person who is to assume the most important office in the event that the party enters government. Thus, in the case of the SPD and CDU, candidates for chancellor are generally made top candidates at the federal level, while at the state level the party's intended minister presidents are made top candidates.
Since the leading candidates of the party represented in parliament belong to it, they can now, if the parliament elects the head of government on the basis of the majority conditions given by the election, participate in this election and thus, if necessary, elect themselves. Konrad Adenauer's first election as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany on 15 September 1949 could not have succeeded without his own vote. A leading candidate who becomes head of government or minister may, according to the prevailing constitutional opinion, retain his parliamentary mandate. For the municipal level, on the other hand, the municipal constitutions of the Länder sometimes stipulate that a municipal representative who is elected to the municipal executive (i.e., for example, a city councillor who becomes a magistrate) loses his office as a municipal representative in order to prevent conflicts of interest.
For a member of the government, even if he is a member of parliament and occasionally uses his parliamentary rights, parliamentary work will not be in the foreground. By its very nature, it cannot perform one of the MP's important duties, which is to scrutinise the government. If, on the other hand, a leading candidate's party goes into opposition, the leading candidate often decides to retain his high office at a lower political level (for example, if he cannot become chancellor, to remain prime minister of a state). He then generally does not take up the parliamentary mandate for which he ran. Thus, a politician's top candidacy often does not (or does not primarily) imply that he is seeking the office for which he is running. It is therefore sometimes polemically referred to as a sham candidacy. However, the top candidates lead their party in the election campaign and are thus the most important personalities in the political debate.
Even in the case of the smaller parties, the top candidates are usually earmarked for one of the most important portfolios when they enter government after the election; in some circumstances they may also be the candidate for chancellor.
Opposing candidate, counting candidate
If there is a clear favourite in an election, for example due to advance arrangements, a candidate who runs against him is called an opposing candidate. If this candidate is not given a chance of actually being elected, he is also referred to as a counting candidate: His candidacy serves only to establish the number of opposition votes. If the candidate nevertheless achieves a good result (measured against his chances of being elected), he is said to have won a respectable election. There are various reasons for the nomination of counted candidates:
- The candidacy of the counting candidate can serve to "show the flag", to achieve a respectable success and thus to improve the chances in subsequent elections. For example, Alfred Dregger started in the state election in Hesse in 1970 as a "counting candidate" of a party (the CDU) that had received just 26.4 % of the votes in the last election. He led the CDU in four elections as the top candidate to 45.6% in 1982.
- In personal elections, an absolute majority of the votes cast is often required in the first ballot. Here, a counted candidacy has the function of demonstrating the strength of one's own supporters. If the counting candidate does not run again in the second ballot (or cannot do so because a run-off is then provided for), he or she can exert influence by making an election recommendation (or refraining from doing so) in favour of one of the remaining candidates. Examples are the presidential election in France in 2007, in which François Bayrou deliberately refrained from making an election recommendation, or the German Reich Presidential election in 1925.
- If the electoral law provides that a personal election is to be held if only one list is registered for election, but a list election is to be held if several lists are up for election (for example, in some local elections, in works council and staff council elections), it may make electoral sense to draw up a second list of counted candidates to ensure that voters cannot change the order of candidates on the only list that is to be taken seriously.
- If election expenses are reimbursed, there is also an economic reason to nominate counted candidates.
- In totalitarian states, counting candidates is done to give the appearance of a democratic election.
Bogus Candidate
If a candidate - or a substantial proportion of those nominating him or her - already knows at the time of candidacy that he or she will not accept his or her mandate if elected, he or she is referred to as a sham candidate. An exception is made for leading candidates on a party list who are not primarily seeking the parliamentary mandate for which they are running, but rather a government office that this parliament has to award. This is common in the Federal Republic of Germany and is generally not objected to (see the section Spitzenkandidat).
If, on the other hand, personalities - and not majorities - are actually standing for election, and a popular person is then put forward by a grouping with the plan that he or she does not want to run for office but leave it to someone else, this must be described as misleading the voter. Bogus candidacies at the back of lists, on the other hand, are quite common. Thus small parties sometimes want to make the seriousness of their candidacy clear by putting up at least as many candidates as there are mandates to be allocated. Every voter then knows that a candidacy on the back 90 % or 95 % of the list places is not to be understood as an aspiration for a mandate, but as support for the party's cause.
Sometimes such sham candidacies are virtually challenged by electoral law. For example, the Hessian municipal election law stipulates that votes cast for a party in elections to the municipal council are only counted in full if the party has nominated candidates for at least one third of the seats to be allocated. If the electoral law allows the voters to influence the order of the candidates (for example, by cumulating and panashing), a prominent dummy candidate from the back of the list can surprisingly receive a mandate after all. Whether he now accepts this, is alone his own decision. He will have to make this decision in consideration of his responsibility to his voters, his responsibility to the party nominating him and his personal interests.
Permanent candidate
In most communities, people are known to repeatedly run for election without any chance of success, usually as individual candidates or as candidates of very small parties or movements. They do this either out of a personal need for recognition or to bring additional attention to a political or private cause. For example, Fridi Miller from Sindelfingen has already run unsuccessfully for dozens of mayoral offices, mainly in the Swabian region, in order to regain custody of her daughter, which had been taken away from her. Among the best-known permanent candidates in German-speaking countries was the German civil rights activist Helmut Palmer (1930-2004), known as the Remstal Rebel, father of the current mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer. He also ran unsuccessfully for a number of mayoral offices, mainly in the Swabian region.
