For reasons of sustainability and cost-effectiveness, efficient joining processes should be applied to manufacture components for electrical applications. A suitable joining technology for this purpose is clinching. This joining technology is already being used for mechanical applications such as joining car body parts or housings. Only in a few applications, clinching is used for current-carrying connections so far. In order to exploit the possible potential of electrical applications, the design of clinch joints and the evaluation criteria must be evolved. For defining the designs of clinch joints for electrical applications, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the contact behavior. Therefore, FE-Models were built considering a detailed geometric description of the characteristic areas of the clinch joints. For these areas, a specific Electrical-Contact-Conductance (ECC) was assigned, which maps the contact behavior. The parameterization was validated experimentally. With the FE-Models, the portions of bulk resistance and contact resistance as part of the joint resistance could be determined as well as the relevant current paths in the clinch joints. The results of this study lead to a better understanding of the contact behavior and is a basis for optimization of clinch joints. For the investigated clinch joints, it was found that the highest ECC values have to be set in the bottom-area, in which, in some cases, only a small percentage of the current commutates between the contact partners.