Lower Saxony state election, 2013

2008 ←

20 January 2013

→ 2018

All 137 seats in the Landtag of Lower Saxony 69 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	David McAllister	Stephan Weil	Anja Piel and Stefan Wenzel
Party	CDU	SPD	Green
Last election	68 seats, 42.5%	48 seats, 30.3%	12 seats, 8.0%
Seats before	68	48	12
Seats won	54	49	20
Seat change	14	1	8
Popular vote	1,287,730	1,165,538	489,572
Percentage	36.0%	32.6%	13.7%
Swing	6.5%	2.3%	5.7%

	Fourth party	Fifth party

Leader	Stefan Birkner	Manfred Sohn
Party	FDP	Left
Last election	13 seats, 8.2%	11 seats, 7.1%
Seats before	13	11
Seats won	14	0
Seat change	1	11
Popular vote	354,971	112,215
Percentage	9.9%	3.1%
Swing	1.7%	4.0%

First votes winners in the electoral districts

CDU

SPD

Ministerpräsident before election

David McAllister
CDU

Ministerpräsident-designate

Stephan Weil
SPD

David McAllister
CDU

Stephan Weil
SPD

A state election was held in Lower Saxony on 20 January 2013 to elect the 137 members of the Landtag.

The CDU-led government of Minister-President David McAllister sought to retain power in the assembly, but fell one seat short of a majority. They were replaced by an SPD-Green coalition, which has a one-seat majority.

In the regional elections on 27 January 2008, the CDU-FDP coalition was reelected under Prime Minister Christian Wulff. The SPD under Wolfgang Jüttner lost more than three percentage points to make it the SPD's worst ever result in Lower Saxony. The FDP retained their status as the third strongest party over the Greens although only by 0.2% of the vote. The Left achieved 7.1 percent of the vote, crossing the minimum electoral threshold and earning representation for the first time in the state legislature. Before the election the SPD & Greens announced their plan to govern together and campaign together. The CDU acted independently of the FDP during the campaign but sought to continue the CDU-FDP coalition after the election. If a CDU-FDP coalition was unable to be formed, the CDU said the SPD would be their second choice; however the SPD itself rejected the idea of a grand coalition with the CDU. The Left and The Pirates remained outside of possible coalition talks and failed to win seats in the election.

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