What is the difference between the Bundestag election and the state election?

The state election takes place every 5 years. If you live in Wuppertal or near it, your city belongs to North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and you vote for the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament.

With the state election you can choose which deputies and parliamentary groups sit in the state parliament. So you decide on the direction of politics in your state.

The individual parties provide deputies, i.e. people you can elect. In the best case, these people then represent your interests in the state parliament.

With your first vote, you choose a person you want to sit on the district council.

With your second vote you vote for a party.

Source: https://www.landtag.nrw.de/home/der-landtag/landtagswahlen/die-landtagswahlen.html

The Bundestag election takes place every four years.

Here you elect the parliament that sits in the German Bundestag and makes political decisions in Germany in the coming years.

You also have two votes in the Bundestag election.

With the first vote you elect a candidate from whom you want him or her to be able to enter the Bundestag directly. This person is from your constituency. There are 299 constituencies in Germany. If most voters in your constituency give this person their first vote, your candidate has a place in the Bundestag for sure. In this way, even people who do not belong to any party get a chance to sit in the Bundestag. In addition, each constituency is represented by one person in the Bundestag.

With the second vote, you vote for a party. Each party has its own deputies. These then gradually move into the Bundestag. A party that has received many votes can send many deputies to the Bundestag. It has many seats in the Bundestag. The more seats in the Bundestag a party has, the more it can have a say.

Source:

https://m.bpb.de/mediathek/599/erst-und-zweitstimme