Hessian state election, 2009

Hesse state election, 2009

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18 January 2009

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All 118 seats of the Landtag of Hesse
60 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Roland Koch	Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel	Jörg-Uwe Hahn
Party	CDU	SPD	FDP
Last election	36.8%	36.7%	9.4%
Seats before	42	42	11
Seats won	46	29	20
Seat change	4	13	9
Percentage	37.2%	23.7%	16.2%
Swing	0.4%	13.0%	6.8%

	Fourth party	Fifth party

Leader	Tarek Al-Wazir	Willi van Ooyen
Party	Green	Left
Last election	7.5%	5.1%
Seats before	9	6
Seats won	17	6
Seat change	8	-
Percentage	13.7%	5.4%
Swing	6.2%	0.3%

Minister-President before election

Roland Koch
CDU

Elected Minister-President

Roland Koch
CDU

Early state elections for the Landtag of Hesse were held in Hesse on 18 January 2009. The reason for the early elections was the inability of the parties to form a government after the inconclusive 2008 Hessian election.

Hesse had been in the midst of political deadlock since January 2008, as a new government was still not formed by the Fall of 2008. The reason that ideologically-allied parties could not form a government was the existence of a bloc of far-left Linke party delegates in the Landtag. The CDU/FDP did not have a majority, nor did the SPD/Greens. Both the Linke party and the Greens pushed hard for a "red-green-red" (SPD-Greens-Linke) coalition, but the SPD initially refused this. The only other option was a grand coalition along the model in the Bundestag after the 2005 election, but this was also very unpopular.

SPD leader Andrea Ypsilanti finally gave in and attempted to negotiate with the Linke party to form a red-green-red coalition, reneging on a promise she had made earlier in the year to never negotiate with the far-left. This action caused an internal revolt among Hesse's SPD Landtag members, resulting in Ypsilanti being cast out as leader and new elections being called.

This election became in effect a referendum on the SPD; although the CDU remained unpopular, the SPD was now much less popular after recent events.

Roland Koch, the CDU party leader in Hesse and minister-president of Hesse before the 2008 elections, also acted as interim minister-president until 31 August 2010. And so even though the CDU had suffered a stinging electoral defeat in 2008, Roland Koch had not been unseated due to the inability of the SPD to form a new government.

The candidates for the office of minister-president in 2009 were the incumbent Roland Koch of the CDU; the new Hesse SPD party leader, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel; Tarek Al-Wazir for the Greens; Jörg-Uwe Hahn for the FDP; and Willi van Ooyen for the Linke.

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