German federal election, 1972

German federal election, 1972

← 1969 19 November 1972 1976 →
All 518 seats in the Bundestag 260 were needed for a majority
Turnout	91.1% (voting eligible)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Willy Brandt Rainer Barzel Walter Scheel Party SPD CDU/CSU FDP Leader since 1964 1971 (CDU) 1968 Last election 237 250 31 Seats won 242 234 42 Seat change 5 16 11 Popular vote 17,175,169 16,806,020 3,129,982 Percentage 45.8% 44.9% 8.4% Swing 3.1% 1.2% 2.6%
Party list election results by state: red denotes states where the SPD had the absolute majority of the votes; pink denotes states where the SPD had the plurality of votes; darker blue denotes states where CSU had the absolute majority of the votes; and lighter blue denotes states where CDU had the plurality of votes
Chancellor before election Willy Brandt SPD Elected Chancellor Willy Brandt SPD

Willy Brandt
SPD

Willy Brandt
SPD

Federal elections were held in West Germany on 19 November 1972. In the first snap elections since 1949, the Social Democratic Party remained the largest party in the Bundestag, winning 242 of the 518 seats.

The Social-liberal coalition of SPD and FDP had lost its majority after several Bundestag MPs (like former FDP ministers Erich Mende and Heinz Starke or SPD partisan Herbert Hupka) had left their party and become members of the CDU/CSU opposition to protest against Chancellor Willy Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik, especially against the de facto recognition of the Oder-Neisse line by the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw.

On 27 April 1972 the opposition had tried to have CDU leader Rainer Barzel elected new chancellor in a motion of no confidence, but Barzel surprisingly missed the majority in the Bundestag by two votes. Rumours that at least one member of CDU/CSU faction had been paid by the East German Stasi intelligence service were confirmed by Markus Wolf, former head of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, in 1997. Nevertheless the following budget debates revealed that the government's majority was lost and only the upcoming organisation of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich delayed the arrangement of new elections. On 22 September 1972 Chancellor Brandt deliberately lost a vote of confidence, allowing President Gustav Heinemann to dissolve the Bundestag the next day.