Lower Saxony state election, 2008

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27 January 2008 (2008-01-27)

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All 152 seats in the Landtag of Lower Saxony
77 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Christian Wulff	Wolfgang Jüttner	Philipp Rösler
Party	CDU	SPD	FDP
Last election	91 seats, 48,3%	63 seats, 33,4%	15 seats, 8,1%
Seats before	91	63	15
Seats won	68	48	13
Seat change	23	15	2
Popular vote	1.455.687	1.035.894	279.557
Percentage	42,5%	30,3%	8,2%
Swing	5,8	3,1	0,1

	Fourth party	Fifth party

Leader	Stefan Wenzel	Kreszentia Flauger
Party	Green	Left
Last election	14 seats, 7,6%	0 seats, 0,3%
Seats before	14	0
Seats won	12	11
Seat change	2	11
Popular vote	273.934	243.106
Percentage	8,0%	7,1%
Swing	0,4	6,6

Ministerpräsident before election

Christian Wulff
CDU

Resulting Ministerräsident

Christian Wulff
CDU

The 2008 Lower Saxony state election was held in Lower Saxony in north-western Germany on 27 January 2008. Despite losing votes and seats, the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) held on to its position as the leading party in the state. The CDU's coalition with the Free Democratic Party (FDP) was able to continue after the election, although their majority was cut from 29 to 10.

Lower Saxony was seen as a stronghold of the Christian Democratic Union and their leader Christian Wulff was seen as likely to easily defeat the Social Democrats. The election in Lower Saxony took place at the same time as an election in the state of Hesse and Wulff was seen as a more moderate leader than Roland Koch in Hesse and consequently more likely to perform better in the election. The CDU government had held spending down, introduced tuition fees for university students, while supporting the minimum wage. The Social Democrats (SPD) led their campaign with a call for a national minimum wage for all workers. The SPD leader in Lower Saxony, Wolfgang Jüttner, was little known to voters and unusually during the campaign made an attack on Wolff for his personal life.

An opinion poll conducted from 2–4 January showed the CDU on 45% and their coalition allies the Free Democrats on 7%, sufficient to retain a majority together. The Social Democrats were on 33%, the The Green Party on 8% and The Left on 3%. This was similar to what a poll in December had shown and confirmed the strong position of the CDU in the election.

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