Election of the German Federal President 2010

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Election of the German Federal President 2010 - third ballot
Candidates Votes in%
Christian Wulff
  
 50.2
Joachim Gauck
  
 39.7
Abstentions
  
 9.7
Outside the Reichstag building in Berlin during the 14th Federal Assembly on June 30, 2010

On June 30, 2010, the 14th Federal Assembly in the Reichstag building in Berlin elected Christian Wulff ( CDU ) as the tenth Federal President to succeed the resigned Federal President Horst Köhler .

Background and election date

On May 31, 2010, Horst Köhler, a German Federal President, resigned from his office for the first time with immediate effect. According to Article 54, Paragraph 4 of the Basic Law (GG), the Federal Assembly had to meet to elect the Federal President no later than 30 days after the resignation. It was therefore of the therefor according to § 1 BPräsWahlG competent President of the Bundestag , Norbert Lammert , convened 30 June of 2010.

Candidates

According to Article 54.1 of the Basic Law, anyone who has the right to vote in the Bundestag and is at least 40 years old as a German citizen can be elected to the position of Federal President . Any member of the Federal Assembly can submit election proposals; the written declaration of consent of the proposed person must be attached, Section 9 (1) of the BPäsWahlG.

  • Four days after Horst Köhler's resignation, the federal government coalition made up of the CDU, CSU and FDP agreed on Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Christian Wulff (CDU) as a candidate.

In the run-up to the election, public opinion polls were carried out on the candidates, although the Federal President is not elected in a direct election by the people. These surveys received a lot of media attention. In a survey by Infratest dimap on June 14 and 15, 2010, 43 percent of those questioned preferred Joachim Gauck, 37 percent Christian Wulff and 2 percent Luc Jochimsen. The fourth candidate, Frank Rennicke, was not asked.

Federal Assembly

Distribution of seats in the 14th Federal Assembly
        
A total of 1244 seats

The Federal Assembly was chaired by the President of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert , in accordance with Section 8 of the Federal Presidential Election Act .

According to Article 54 (5) of the Basic Law, whoever “receives the votes of the majority of the members of the Federal Assembly” in the first or second ballot is elected. In 2010, 623 votes were required for this. In the subsequent ballots, the candidate with the most votes is elected. The CDU, CSU and FDP parties, which support the federal government, provided 644 of the 1244 members of the Federal Assembly, which was composed as follows:

Political party Members
total Federation countries
CDU / CSU 496 239 257
SPD 333 146 187
FDP 148 93 55
Alliance 90 / The Greens 129 68 61
The left 124 76 48
Free voters 10 0 10
NPD 3 0 3
SSW 1 0 1
total 1244 622 622

Election result

In the first and second ballots, none of the candidates achieved the necessary absolute majority. After that, Luc Jochimsen and Frank Rennicke stopped running. The left announced that the majority of its electorate would abstain in the third ballot. The three NPD electors announced that they would now vote for Gauck. In the third ballot, Christian Wulff achieved an absolute majority with 625 votes (with 494 votes for Gauck and 121 abstentions). With regard to Article 55, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law, he then resigned his office as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony before declaring acceptance of the election. He was sworn in as Federal President on July 2, 2010.

Election results
candidate 1st ballot 2nd ballot 3rd ballot
be right proportion of be right proportion of be right proportion of
Christian Wulff 600 48.2% 615 49.4% 625 50.2%
Joachim Gauck 499 40.1% 490 39.4% 494 39.7%
Luc Jochimsen 126 10.1% 123 9.9% Candidacies
withdrawn
Frank Rennicke 3 0.2% 3 0.2%
Abstentions 13 1.0% 7th 0.6% 121 9.7%
Possible voices 1,244 100.0% 1,244 100.0% 1,244 100.0%
  of which votes cast 1,242 99.8% 1,239 99.6% 1,242 99.8%
  of which valid votes 1,241 99.8% 1,238 99.5% 1,240 99.7%
Remarks:
  1. ↑ a b When calculating the proportion of votes, the number of members of the Federal Assembly is decisive in the first and second ballots.
  2. ↑ In the third ballot, the candidate who has the most votes is elected (relative majority). Invalid or not cast votes, as well as abstentions, are not taken into account. For better comparability with the data for the first two ballots, the percentage of votes is based on the total number of members of the Federal Assembly (= 1244).

Election debate

With Joachim Gauck, a candidate was nominated by the SPD and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen who also enjoys a great reputation among the CDU / CSU and FDP.

Holger Zastrow , Torsten Herbst and Tino Günther from the Saxon FDP parliamentary group as well as the Bremen FDP leader Oliver Möllenstädt openly announced that they would vote for Joachim Gauck in the Federal Assembly. Three members of the CDU parliamentary group in the Saxon state parliament voted for the list of the opposition in the election of the representatives in the Federal Assembly, two stayed away from the vote and one cast an invalid vote. Therefore, the SPD and B'90 / Greens were each able to send one more voter than predicted.

Several high CDU politicians openly expressed their displeasure that the governing coalition had not nominated Joachim Gauck itself, but announced that they would still vote for Wulff. Against this background, commentators made the continued existence of the governing coalition consisting of the Union and FDP dependent on Wulff's election as Federal President. This led to debates about the admissibility of linking the election with questions of party politics and about the freedom of conscience of the members of the Federal Assembly. The former Saxon Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf asked Chancellor Angela Merkel in a newspaper article to give CDU members free choice. Former Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker also called for the parliamentary group to be lifted in the election . Former President Roman Herzog said in the SWR that he did not understand Biedenkopf's demand because the secret ballot and the composition of the Federal Assembly ensured from the outset that the voting decision of each individual member was "completely free". Compulsory parliamentary groups are not practicable in the Federal Assembly.

In an interview in the Hamburger Abendblatt on June 17, 2010, Luc Jochimsen said that Gauck was an advocate of the Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan and someone who, in dealing with citizens of the former GDR, did not consider the left to be superfluous, nor for them selectable like Wulff. "That wouldn't suddenly change in a third ballot."

Web links

Commons : Federal President (Germany)  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Wulff nominated as Federal President ( memento of September 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on liberale.de
  2. ↑ Federal President election: Gauck is a non-partisan candidate ( memento from June 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) on spd.de
  3. ↑ One president for everyone  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.gruene.de   on gruene.de
  4. ^ Federal Assembly: The SSW elects Joachim Gauck. South Schleswig voter association, archived from the original on November 12, 2011 ; Retrieved June 28, 2010 .
  5. ↑ The majority of the Free Voters favor Gauck. Welt.de, accessed on June 28, 2010 .
  6. ↑ Saxon FDP will vote for Gauck . sächsische.de. June 18, 2010. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  7. ^ Right-wing extremist songwriters and ballad singers - For example Frank Rennicke on the IDA-NRW website
  8. ↑ A national federal president? on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education
  9. ↑ Question: "If you could elect the Federal President directly, which of the three candidates would you choose?", 1000 respondents by telephone as part of the ARD Germany trend from Infratest dimap ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info : The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.infratest-dimap.de
  10. ^ Composition of the 14th Federal Assembly 2010 , wahlrecht.de
  11. ↑ Wulff after Zitterpartie Federal President  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heute.de   , heute.de, June 30, 2010
  12. ↑ The lesser evil: Gauck instead of Türken-Wulff. In: NPD parliamentary group Saxony. June 30, 2010, accessed on February 3, 2020 (German).
  13. ↑ "The office of Federal President begins with the expiry of the term of office of his predecessor, but not before the President of the Bundestag receives the declaration of acceptance." § 10 BPäsWahlG. Since the predecessor's term of office had already ended, Wulff's term of office began immediately upon acceptance of the election.
  14. ↑ Minutes of all federal assemblies from 1949 to 2010 ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 5.3 MB)
  15. ↑ Federal President Election : Gauck is happy about the increase in votes . focus.de. June 17, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2010.
  16. ↑ Gauck-Lager can count on two unexpected additional votes . otz.de. June 16, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2010.
  17. ↑ Election of the Federal President: Gauck even turns the Saxons into revolutionaries . ftd.de. June 17, 2010. Archived from the original on June 18, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2010.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Böhmer calls Joachim Gauck “honorable” . welt.de. June 27, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2010.
  19. ↑ Federal presidential election : Gauck drives a wedge into the coalition . ftd.de. June 5, 2010. Archived from the original on June 7, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2010.
  20. ↑ Seehofer ties the future of the coalition to Wulff election . heute.de. June 8, 2010. Accessed June 27, 2010.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heute.de  
  21. ↑ Kurt Biedenkopf on the presidential election - Free the election! . faz.net. June 17, 2010. Retrieved March 4, 2015.
  22. ↑ DIE ZEIT June 27, 2010
  23. ↑ Jochen Gaugele and Karsten Kammholz: Luc Jochimsen: Gauck is not forgiving. June 17, 2010, accessed on February 3, 2020 (German).