West German federal election, 1961

Election for the 4th German Federal Diet

← 1957

17 September 1961 (1961-09-17)

1965 →

All 521 seats in the Bundestag
261 seats needed for a majority

Turnout

87.7% (voting eligible)

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Konrad Adenauer	Willy Brandt	Erich Mende
Party	CDU/CSU	SPD	FDP
Seats before	277	181	44
Seats won	251	203	67
Seat change	26	22	23
Popular vote	14,298,372	11,427,355	4,028,766
Percentage	45.4%	36.2%	12.8%
Swing	4.8%	4.4%	5.1%

Party list election results by state: the lighter blue denotes states where CDU had the plurality of votes; darker blue denotes states where CSU had the absolute majority of the votes; and pink denotes states where the SPD had the plurality of votes

Chancellor before election

Konrad Adenauer
CDU/CSU

Elected Chancellor

Konrad Adenauer
CDU/CSU

Federal elections were held in West Germany on 17 September 1961. CDU/CSU remained the largest faction, while the Social Democratic Party narrowly became the largest individual party in the Bundestag, winning 203 of the 521 seats.

For the first time, the SPD announced a "chancellor-candidate", who was not chairman of the party: Willy Brandt, the Governing Mayor of West Berlin. After the building of the Berlin Wall, he gained more and more sympathy, while chancellor Konrad Adenauer was criticised for not showing enough support for the people of West Berlin. Adenauer had to save the absolute majority of CDU and CSU, but, considering his age and his long term as chancellor, there were big doubts if he should lead the country in a fourth term.

Seat results—SPD in red, FDP in yellow, CDU/CSU in black, others (moderate right) in gray

The absolute majority was lost by the conservative union due to the gains of the liberal FDP under Erich Mende.

Konrad Adenauer remained Chancellor, building a coalition between the CDU/CSU-FDP. In 1962 he had to announce a fifth cabinet: The FDP had temporarily left the coalition after the secretary of defense, Franz Josef Strauß (CSU), had ordered the arrest of five journalists for publishing a memo detailing alleged weaknesses in the German armed forces (known as the Spiegel scandal). In 1963 Adenauer finally resigned; Ludwig Erhard took over his position as head of the coalition and government.

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