Local elections in Rhineland-Palatinate 2019
The municipal elections in Rhineland-Palatinate 2019 took place on May 26, 2019 . The election date was set by the state government and announced in the state gazette on July 16, 2018. There are city and municipal councils , municipality councils and district councils as well as in the District Association Palatinate elected to the county council. In cities and municipalities in which local districts are formed, the local councils and mayors were also elected. There may still be runoff elections for the mayor elections. In cities and municipalities belonging to the association, the city or local mayors were directly elected at the same time , with the runoff elections that may be required being scheduled for June 16, 2019. The European Parliament election was held on the same day . Parallel found in Baden-Württemberg , Brandenburg , Mecklenburg-Vorpommern , the Saarland , Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia also local elections as well as in Bremen , the choice to citizenship instead. The voter turnout increased by 6.1 percentage points compared to 2014 to 61.7%.
Legal
Citizens of a member state of the European Union were entitled to vote in the elections to the municipal representative bodies (local advisory council, municipal / city council, association council, district council) as well as for the elections of the mayors , mayors and district administrators . The prerequisites for this were that they were 18 years of age on the day of the election, that their main residence had been in the electoral area for at least three months before the election and that the person was not excluded from voting in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The eligibility was when the above conditions fulfilled person in the Federal Republic of Germany was not not disqualified from voting or eligibility and in their country of origin from eligibility. About 67,000 people ran in the 2019 local elections.
Starting position
In the 2014 local elections, the CDU received the highest share of the vote with 38.6%. It was followed by the SPD with 29.8%, various groups of voters (mainly FWGs ) with 10.6%, the Greens with 9.5%, the FDP with 4.1% and Die Linke with 3.2%. The AfD , which appeared for the first time, received 3.0%.
In the parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate since 2016 ruled by a coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP, the CDU the second largest party in the parliament and the AFD moved in 2016 for the first time and became the third strongest party. Other parties failed at the five percent hurdle .
Electoral system
In the local elections in Rhineland-Palatinate, those entitled to vote for each representative body, i. H. for each local council, district council, etc., as many votes as there are seats in the respective representative body. For the city councils in the two largest cities in the state, Mainz and Ludwigshafen am Rhein , this is 60 seats and therefore 60 votes. These voices may be cumulated and variegated . Cumulation means that each person can be given up to three votes in a nomination. Spreading means that people on different nominations can get votes from the same voter. There is also the option of submitting a list cross. With a list cross, the persons listed on the respective list are assigned the votes that may still remain after accumulating and variegating in the order of their naming. A person named twice or three times first receives two or three votes before the person named below receives the first vote. People could also be crossed out on the ballot paper; they would then not receive a vote if the list cross was set.
Participation in voting
Parties and electoral associations that have not been represented in the state parliament or in the respective representative body with their own nomination without interruption since their last election must collect support signatures from eligible voters from the respective area. This is up to 250 signatures for a nomination. No signatures need to be collected for communities with less than 500 inhabitants. Parties and electoral associations that are represented in a district council do not have to collect signatures for nominations for the municipal councils and councils of the same district.
Direct elections
Along with the elections for the representative bodies, honorary local mayors and local councilors are also newly elected. In addition, some full-time mayors and district administrators are directly elected. These are in detail:
- the district administrators of the districts of Altenkirchen (Westerwald) and Alzey-Worms
- the Lord Mayor of Ingelheim am Rhein
- the mayors of the non-union town of Schifferstadt and the non-union community of Morbach
- the association mayors of fifteen association municipalities
The elections of the association mayors are partly related to the local reorganization, which will lead to mergers of association communities on July 1, 2019 and January 1, 2020. The large district town of Ingelheim am Rhein will also be enlarged as part of this, but regular new elections are due here.
The planned direct election of the mayor could not take place in all municipalities. In smaller towns in particular, there was not always at least one applicant for the position. In addition, in some cases the single candidate was unable to get the necessary majority of the votes. Then the municipal code provides for another direct election. If there is no applicant, the respective municipal council can finally elect a mayor. Since the councils could not find a candidate promptly in all cases, six months after the local elections there were still 38 municipalities without a mayor.
particularities
The mayoral election in the local parish Maxsain had to be postponed after a candidate died shortly before the election. In the municipality of Herxheim , the place of residence of the individual candidates was missing on the ballot paper for the election to the municipal council, so that the postal votes already received were invalid and the election had to be postponed to June 16, 2019. In Mudersbach , the election to the municipal council did not take place until September 1, 2019. This postponement was necessary due to a formal error in the election proposal of a group of voters.
After the local election, the Bad Kreuznach public prosecutor's office initiated investigations into election fraud against the election officer of the Birkenfeld district following a criminal complaint from two unsuccessful applicants . This is said to have allowed the current mayor of the local community of Abentheuer to stand for election despite missing the application deadline.
Election result
| Political party | weighted votes |
Share in% |
Seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDU | 603.107 | 31.10 | 511 |
| SPD | 438.138 | 22.59 | 381 |
| Green | 312.027 | 16.09 | 271 |
| AfD | 161.024 | 8.30 | 140 |
| FDP | 118,887 | 6.13 | 98 |
| THE LEFT | 67,249 | 3.47 | 58 |
| The party | 9,868 | 0.51 | 9 |
| Free voters | 7,867 | 0.41 | 8th |
| ÖDP | 7,735 | 0.40 | 5 |
| PIRATES | 2,198 | 0.11 | 2 |
| BIG | 1,214 | 0.06 | 1 |
| VOLT | 1,164 | 0.06 | 1 |
| LKR | 345 | 0.02 | - |
| NPD | 148 | 0.01 | - |
| Groups of voters | 208.184 | 10.74 | 183 |
| total | 1,939,155 | 100.00 | 1668 |
According to the official final result, the CDU remains the strongest party at the municipal level in Rhineland-Palatinate despite a loss of 7.5 percentage points. It is followed by the SPD, which achieved 22.6% after a loss of 7.2 percentage points. On the other hand, Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, which became the third-strongest party with 16.1%, as well as the AfD, now the fourth-strongest party with 8.3% and the FDP with 6.1%, gained. The left saw slight gains, gaining 3.5% of the vote, while electoral groups reached 11.1%.
Web links
- State law on elections to the municipal representative bodies (Local Election Act - KWG -) in the version of January 31, 1994
- Local election regulations (KWO) of October 11, 1983
- Local election results 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ State Gazette: Announcement of the election date for the local elections 2019 ( [1] )
- ↑ a b [2]
- ↑ Overview of the upcoming direct elections 2019 on the website of the State Returning Officer Rhineland-Palatinate
- ↑ Gernot Ludwig: 38 communities in Rhineland-Palatinate without a mayor. Südwestrundfunk Rheinland-Pfalz Aktuell, December 3, 2019, accessed on December 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Maxsain: Mayor candidate dies surprisingly - SWR
- ↑ Breakdown with ballot papers: Election to the municipal council in Herxheim postponed - SWR
- ^ AK-Kurier: Mudersbach has voted: This is the new local council. September 2, 2019, accessed December 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Follow-up to the local elections: Investigations against election officers in the Hunsrück - SWR
- ↑ [3] overall results
