The first Reichstag of the new empire was elected in March 1871 under an electoral law promulgated in 1869, which remained in force until 1918. There were 382 deputies, raised to 397 in 1873, when Alsace-Lorraine was fully incorporated. They were elected by all men over the age of 25 by secret ballot. If in a constituency no candidate obtained 50 per cent of the vote, there was a second ballot to decide between the two candidates with the highest number of votes. In the first election of 1871 electoral participation was only 51 per cent, but it rose throughout the imperial period, with some setbacks, to nearly 85 per cent in the last election of 1912. The number of second ballots rose over the same period from 45 to 190. This indicates that Bismarck’s calculation, that the Reichstag would occupy a somewhat limited place in the constitutional system, was not borne out in the long run. Universal suffrage, which he had regarded as a means of containing the liberals, proved a potent engine for politicizing the masses. One aspect of the emerging political mass market was the rise of more coherent parties. The German political parties had hitherto been fluid parliamentary groups without much of a permanent structure in the country. Now this changed gradually, though the speed with which parties adapted to the rise of mass electorates varied. The liberal parties were slowest to adapt and retained longest the reliance on local notabilities to fight elections and this was one reason why they became progressively weaker.