2009 German federal election

German federal election, 2009

← 2005

27 September 2009 (2009-09-27)

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All 598 seats (plus 24 overhangs) in the Bundestag
312 seats were needed for a majority

Turnout

44,005,575 (70.8%)

6.9 pp

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Angela Merkel	Frank-Walter Steinmeier	Guido Westerwelle
Party	CDU/CSU	SPD	FDP
Leader since	10 April 2000	18 October 2008	4 May 2001
Leader's seat	Nordvorpommern-Rügen	Brandenburg an der Havel	North Rhine-Westphalia
Last election	226 seats, 35.2%	222 seats, 34.2%	61 seats, 9.8%
Seats won	239	146	93
Seat change	13	76	32
Popular vote	14,658,515	9,990,488	6,316,080
Percentage	33.8%	23.0%	14.6%
Swing	1.4 pp	11.2 pp	4.8 pp

	Fourth party	Fifth party

Leader	Oskar Lafontaine	Jürgen Trittin
Party	Left	Green
Leader since	16 June 2007	16 November 2008
Leader's seat	Saarland	Lower Saxony
Last election	54 seats, 8.7%	51 seats, 8.1%
Seats won	76	68
Seat change	22	17
Popular vote	5,155,933	4,643,272
Percentage	11.9%	10.7%
Swing	3.2 pp	2.6 pp

Chancellor before election

Angela Merkel
CDU/CSU

Elected Chancellor

Angela Merkel
CDU/CSU

German federal elections took place on 27 September 2009 to elect the members of the Bundestag, the federal Lower house of Germany. Preliminary results showed that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) won the election, and the three parties announced their intention to form a new centre-right government with Angela Merkel as Chancellor. Their main opponent, Frank-Walter Steinmeier's Social Democratic Party (SPD), conceded defeat. The Christian Democrats previously governed in coalition with the FDP in most of the 1949–1966 governments of Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard and the 1982–1998 governments of Helmut Kohl.

Since the 2005 election, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) had governed in a grand coalition with the SPD. However, it was her stated goal to win a majority for CDU/CSU and FDP (the CDU/CSU's traditional coalition partner) in 2009.

Foreign minister and Vice Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) was formally nominated as his party's chancellor-candidate at a convention on 18 October 2008. He aimed to form a government in which the SPD was the strongest party, but which also excluded the left-socialist party The Left.

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