A federal election for the tenth Reichstag of the German Empire was held on 16 June 1898. It was a regularly scheduled election and came at the end of the first Reichstag to complete a five-year term after the 1888 constitutional change that lengthened the sitting period to five years. Unlike the previous election, which was dominated by conflicts over a military appropriations bill, no single issue stood out in 1898. The chancellor at the time of the election was Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, an independent.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) received the most votes with 27.2%, but the Centre Party remained the largest party in the Reichstag with 102 of the 397 seats, whilst the SPD won just 56. Voter turnout was 68%, the lowest since 1884.
Electoral system
The election was held under general, equal, direct and secret suffrage. All German males over the age of 25 years were able to vote except for active members of the military and recipients of poor relief. The restrictions on the military were meant to keep it from becoming politicized, while men on relief were considered to be open to political manipulation. The constitutional guarantee of a secret vote was not safeguarded at the time, since ballot boxes and polling booths were not introduced until 1903.
If no candidate in a district won an absolute majority of the votes, a runoff election was held between the first- and second-place finishers. It was possible for a replacement candidate to be introduced in a runoff.
Since at least the 1893 election, the distribution of seats following an election was affected by the fact that Germany had not redistricted since 1871, when each district had had about 100,000 voters. The intervening years had seen considerable rural to urban migration due to industrialisation. Parties such as the Social Democrats that had predominantly urban electorates suffered disproportionately because each vote in a heavily populated urban district carried less weight than a vote in rural areas that had lost inhabitants.