State election in Lower Saxony 2013
The election for the 17th State Parliament of Lower Saxony took place on January 20, 2013.
Starting position
In the state elections in Lower Saxony in 2008 , the CDU under Prime Minister Christian Wulff remained clearly the strongest force with 42.5 percent of the votes despite losses, ahead of the SPD with top candidate Wolfgang Jüttner , which achieved its worst state election result in Lower Saxony with 30.3 percent . The third strongest party with slight gains was the FDP with top candidate Philipp Rösler and 8.2 percent of the votes ahead of the slightly stronger Greens (8.0 percent). The left moved into the state parliament for the first time with a result of 7.1 percent.
The black-yellow coalition retained the majority despite the loss of mandate and again formed a government under Prime Minister Christian Wulff ( Wulff II cabinet ). In April 2010 the cabinet was reorganized. Wulff resigned because of his election as Federal President on June 30, 2010. On July 1, 2010, the new cabinet was appointed under Prime Minister David McAllister ( McAllister Cabinet ).
Coalition statements : The SPD and the Greens wanted to govern together after the election and also fought together in the election campaign. The CDU rejected solid cooperation in the election campaign with the FDP, but the party sought a black-yellow coalition after the election. McAllister ruled out a coalition with the Greens in early 2013. The left and the Pirate Party were largely left out of discussions about possible coalitions. The SPD refused to work with leftists and pirates.
meaning
The state election was seen as one of the last mood tests for the 2013 election year, in which, in addition to the 2013 federal election and local elections in Schleswig-Holstein, there were also state elections in Bavaria and Hesse . While the election in Bavaria took place on September 15th, in Hesse the election was held at the same time as the general election on September 22nd.
Lower Saxony is the fourth largest state in terms of population. The formation of a coalition of the SPD and the Greens, which has a narrow one-vote majority, had an immediate impact on the formation of a majority in the Federal Council , since the election of the black and yellow government resulted in the loss of 6 votes for the black and yellow camp and thus led to a majority of the opposition parties (SPD, Greens, Die Linke, SSW ).
The election was also seen as a vote on FDP party leader Philipp Rösler and General Secretary Patrick Döring , who are both based in Lower Saxony and have their political roots there. In the event that the FDP would not get over the five percent hurdle , Rösler was expected to resign in the run-up to the election.
Electoral system
The seats in the state parliament are assigned according to the D'Hondt procedure . There is a five percent hurdle .
If a party receives more seats through the first votes in the constituencies than it is entitled to through the second share of votes, these mandates remain as overhang mandates . The number of seats is increased by these overhang seats and an equal number of compensation seats and the distribution of seats is recalculated using the D'Hondt method. If there are also overhang mandates after this, they remain in place without compensation.
Parties and candidates
The state election committee allowed state election proposals from 11 parties:
| No. | Short name | Party name | Top candidate | 2008 result | Number of constituency applicants | Members |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | CDU | Christian Democratic Union of Germany | David McAllister | 42.5% (68 seats) | 87 | 68,000 |
| 02 | SPD | Social Democratic Party of Germany | Stephan Weil | 30.3% (48 seats) | 87 | 65,000 |
| 03 | FDP | Free Democratic Party | Stefan Birkner | 8.2% (13 seats) | 87 | 6,000 |
| 04 | GREEN | Alliance 90 / The Greens | Anja Piel and Stefan Wenzel | 8.0% (12 seats) | 87 | 6,335 |
| 05 | THE LEFT | The left | Manfred son | 7.1% (11 seats) | 87 | 3,000 |
| 06 | Alliance 21 / RRP | Dieter Müller | not running | 8th | 425 | |
| 09 | THE FREEDOM | Freedom - civil rights party for more freedom and democracy | Fabian Nagel | not running | 2 | 180 |
| 12 | FREE VOTERS | Free voters | Torsten Jung | 0.5% | 44 | 350 |
| 14th | NPD | National Democratic Party of Germany | Adolf Dammann | 1.5% | 17th | 500 |
| 16 | PBC | Party of faithful Christians | Sonni bin | 0.2% | 4th | 350 |
| 20th | PIRATES | Pirate party | Meinhart Ramaswamy and Katharina Nocun | not running | 65 | 2,897 |
Unapproved country lists
Parties and electoral associations that were not represented in the state parliament had to report their participation to the state election committee by October 22, 2012 and submit at least 2,000 support signatures by November 15 . The state election proposals of the German Democratic Party , the Muslim Democratic Union (MDU), the PARTY , the Lower Saxony No-Idea and the Common Sense Germany party were not allowed because the necessary support signatures were not presented. The German Center Party , the Senior Citizens Party , the Family Party of Germany and the Party of Reason were allowed to vote, but did not submit any state nominations. For formal reasons, the associations Democracy-DD-Germany , German Elite Party and Left-Liberal Party of Germany were not recognized as parties.
Individual applicants
In addition to the direct candidates of the parties competing with state lists, the MDU in two constituencies and the ddp, the center, the family party and NO! direct candidates in each constituency. In addition, there was one non-party applicant each in constituencies 13 (Seesen), 28 (Hannover-Mitte) and 83 (Leer).
Demographics
The average age of the 659 applicants was 48 years. The oldest applicant was 86 years old and was a candidate for Alliance 21 / RRP . The youngest applicants were 18 years old and ran for Pirates and Die Linke .
Around 27 percent were women and 73 percent were men. Alliance 90 / The Greens had the highest proportion of women with 47.7 percent of all applicants. Only in relation to the state list proposals, the proportion of women on the left was highest at 52 percent, followed by the Greens at 50 percent. All other parties were well below. Among the parties that applied in several constituencies, the Greens also had the highest proportion of women among the constituency candidates. With them, 47.1 percent of the applicants were women. This was followed by the SPD with 31 percent women.
Voting decision aids
For the first time a Wahl-O-Mat was published for Lower Saxony (see web links ). It was used more than 600,000 times and thus by around 10 percent of the electorate. Parliamentary Watch again offered the possibility of a public polling of candidates. Spiegel Online started a candidate check to compare the positions of candidates in a constituency.
Election programs were published in “ easy language ” by various parties, including the SPD, Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen and NPD.
Campaign issues
State political issues
- Educational policy
- The SPD, the Greens and the Left want to abolish tuition fees , the CDU and FDP want to keep them; In the opinion of the Greens and Leftists, elementary school should go beyond grade four, the CDU, SPD and FDP are against it; The SPD, the Greens and the Left want to expand the comprehensive school and allow small new schools, the CDU and FDP are relying on the high school introduced in 2011 as a merger of secondary and secondary schools
Federal political issues
- Environment and energy
- SPD, Greens, Leftists demand a stop to exploration for Gorleben ; The CDU and FDP are also in favor of a new, open-ended search for a nuclear waste repository, without excluding Gorleben; In principle, all parties are in favor of expanding renewable energies and the electricity grid; The CDU and FDP consider the construction of further coal-fired power plants to be possible, the SPD relies on gas, the Greens want to accelerate the energy transition and are also calling for resource conservation and energy efficiency, the Left Party also wants wind power plants on land as part of decentralized supply
- Factory farming
- The CDU and FDP see new jobs in large slaughterhouses, the SPD and the left want at least to restrict factory farming, and the Greens want to get rid of them bit by bit
- traffic
- FDP rejects further speed restrictions on the A2 , the left is in favor of general speed limits on motorways, SPD wants “intelligent and comprehensible” speed limits, CDU wants above all to defuse accident blackspots, Greens are in favor of more controls and further speed limits as well as a no-overtaking ban for trucks on motorways; CDU, SPD and FDP are calling for the A20 coastal motorway to be expanded ; Greens and leftists rely on rail and waterways
- minimum wage
- FDP is strictly against it; CDU would like to negotiate a lower limit by the collective bargaining party, the SPD and the Greens are calling for a minimum wage of 8.50 euros, the left one of 10 euros; the pirates favor the unconditional basic income
Survey
In the opinion polls, values were found to be about five percent too high for the CDU. With around ten percent of the vote, the FDP received almost twice as many votes as predicted. The reason for this difference in votes was that in opinion polls, many CDU voters gave the CDU as their party preference, but then voted for the FDP so that the liberals could move into the state parliament and form a coalition with the CDU again.
In the case of the Greens and the SPD, the opinion research institutes submitted suitable values. INFO GMBH saw the left in parliament a few days before the election, all other institutes predicted a failure at the five percent hurdle with three percent. The Pirate Party did unexpectedly badly.
For the Sunday question, the polls indicated the following proportions in the individual surveys in Lower Saxony:
| Institute | date | CDU | SPD | FDP | GREEN | LEFT | PIRATES | Others |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GMS | 01/17/2013 | 41% | 33% | 5% | 13% | 3% | 3% | 2% |
| INFO GmbH | 01/12/2013 | 38.0% | 31.5% | 4.5% | 14.5% | 6.0% | 3.0% | 2.5% |
| Infratest dimap | 01/10/2013 | 40% | 33% | 5% | 13% | 3% | 3% | 3% |
| GMS | 01/10/2013 | 41% | 33% | 5% | 13% | 3% | 3% | 2% |
| Research group elections | 01/10/2013 | 39% | 33% | 5% | 13% | 3% | 3% | 4% |
| Infratest dimap | 03/01/2013 | 40% | 34% | 4% | 13% | 3% | 3% | 3% |
| INFO GmbH | 12/22/2012 | 38.5% | 33.0% | 3.5% | 12.5% | 4.0% | 4.5% | 4.0% |
| Research group elections | December 06, 2012 | 39% | 32% | 4% | 13% | 4% | 4% | 4% |
| Infratest dimap | December 06, 2012 | 40% | 33% | 3% | 15% | 3% | 3% | 3% |
| GMS | December 04, 2012 | 41% | 32% | 4% | 13% | 3% | 4% | 3% |
| Infratest dimap | 11/08/2012 | 41% | 34% | 3% | 13% | 3% | 3% | 3% |
| Infratest dimap | 09/20/2012 | 37% | 33% | 3% | 15% | 4% | 4% | 4% |
| GMS | 09/20/2012 | 38% | 33% | 5% | 13% | 5% | 3% | 3% |
| Forsa | 07/24/2012 | 38% | 33% | 4% | 11% | 4% | 7% | 3% |
| YouGov | 07/19/2012 | 31% | 35% | 4% | 14% | 5% | 7% | 4% |
| Infratest dimap | 05/16/2012 | 32% | 36% | 4% | 13% | 3% | 8th % | 4% |
| GMS | 05/16/2012 | 37% | 33% | 3% | 13% | 3% | 9% | 2% |
| Infratest dimap | 01/25/2012 | 36% | 32% | 3% | 17% | 5% | 4% | 3% |
| GMS | 01/20/2012 | 37% | 33% | 3% | 18% | 3% | 3% | 3% |
When asked who the Lower Saxony would elect to be Prime Minister directly, the opinion pollers gave the following results:
| Institute | date | McAllister | Because | neither nor | I do not know |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infratest dimap | 11/08/2012 | 51% | 27% | 6% | - |
| Infratest dimap | 09/20/2012 | 46% | 27% | 10% | - |
| YouGov | 06/19/2012 | 36% | 22% | - | 42% |
| Infratest dimap | 05/16/2012 | 45% | 30% | 11% | 14% |
| GMS | 05/16/2012 | 51% | 30% | 12% | 7% |
| Infratest dimap | 01/25/2012 | 54% | 27% | 6% | 13% |
| GMS | 01/20/2012 | 52% | 30% | 11% | 7% |
Official end result
The preliminary official result was announced at around 11.40 p.m. on election evening, the final result was announced on January 31.
According to the official final result, the CDU received an overhang mandate and the SPD a compensatory mandate, so that the state parliament had 137 members. The SPD and the Greens together received 1,654,892 second votes, 12,372 more than the CDU and FDP combined. In the distribution of seats, the SPD and the Greens received one more mandate than the CDU and FDP, so that Stephan Weil was able to replace David McAllister as Prime Minister. A red-green coalition and the Weil I cabinet were formed .
The turnout was 59.4 percent (2008: 57.1). Of the 6,097,697 eligible voters (2008: 6,087,297 eligible voters), 3,620,434 (2008: 3,476,112) voted. The constituencies with the highest / lowest voter turnout were Springe with 66.6% and Delmenhorst with 49.5% . 51,855 first votes (1.4 percent) and 45,534 second votes (1.3 percent) were invalid.
The official final result published on January 31:
| Political party | First votes | proportion of | Second votes | proportion of | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CDU | 1,519,182 | 42.6% | 1,287,549 | 36.0% | 54 |
| SPD | 1,341,991 | 37.6% | 1,165,419 | 32.6% | 49 |
| GREEN | 373.249 | 10.5% | 489.473 | 13.7% | 20th |
| FDP | 118,556 | 3.3% | 354.970 | 9.9% | 14th |
| THE LEFT | 110,525 | 3.1% | 112,212 | 3.1% | - |
| PIRATES | 52,959 | 1.5% | 75,603 | 2.1% | - |
| FREE VOTERS | 39,132 | 1.1% | 39,714 | 1.1% | - |
| NPD | 6,978 | 0.2% | 29,449 | 0.8% | - |
| THE FREEDOM | 1,322 | 0.0% | 11,873 | 0.3% | - |
| PBC | 858 | 0.0% | 5,676 | 0.2% | - |
| Alliance 21 / RRP | 1,724 | 0.0% | 2,962 | 0.1% | - |
| FAMILY | 664 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| CENTER | 373 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| MDU | 210 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| ddp | 204 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| NO! | 146 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| 3 individual applicants | 530 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
See also
- State elections in Lower Saxony
- List of the state electoral districts in Lower Saxony
- List of members of the Lower Saxony State Parliament (17th electoral term)
Web links
- Election to the Lower Saxony State Parliament, Lower Saxony State Returning Officer
- Lower Saxony election atlas 2013 Interactive constituency map with preliminary results, results of previous elections as well as structural data on population and economy, SVG format
- Sample ballot for many constituencies in the state election on Wahlumfrage.de
- Wahl-O-Mat for the 2013 state elections in Lower Saxony
- State election in Lower Saxony 2013 on the information portal on political education
Individual evidence
- ^ Official final result of the state election on January 27, 2008 in Lower Saxony
- ↑ Peter Carstens, Berlin: Not sunk yet. In: FAZ.net . August 3, 2012, accessed December 17, 2014 .
- ↑ www.wahlrecht.de
- ↑ State Returning Officer Lower Saxony State election 2013: 11 state election proposals approved by the state election committee
- ^ Website of the RRP Lower Saxony ( Memento of the original from January 9, 2013 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.
- ↑ The party “Freedom”, Lower Saxony State Association, is positioning itself
- ↑ Press release of the FW website of the FW to determine the state list
- ↑ 2008 as Free Voters Lower Saxony - Citizens' Initiatives, Citizens Lists and Independent Voting Communities, see Free Voters # Lower Saxony
- ↑ Our Christmas present for all anti-democratic forces
- ↑ Heise.de Pirates are targeting six percent in Lower Saxony
- ^ Message from the regional returning officer in Lower Saxony
- ^ Message from the regional returning officer in Lower Saxony
- ↑ According to the Federal Agency for Political Education
- ↑ parliamentwatch.de - possibility of questioning the direct candidates for the state elections in Lower Saxony 2013 ( memento of the original from January 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Candidate Check: Lower Saxony 2013. In: Spiegel Online Flash. Retrieved December 17, 2014 .
- ↑ www.spdnds.de (PDF file)
- ↑ www.gruene-niedersachsen.de ( Memento of the original from December 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file)
- ↑ www.unserweg.net ( Memento of the original from December 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Election polls for the state elections in Lower Saxony .
- ↑ Survey: CDU strongest force in Lower Saxony. In: welt.de . July 24, 2012, accessed December 17, 2014 .
- ↑ a b Election polls on behalf of the NDR ( Memento from May 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ a b The political mood in Lower Saxony, April 2012 (PDF; 395 kB)
- ↑ a b survey results at NDR.de
- ↑ Majority for red-green in Lower Saxony
- ↑ infratest-dimap.de: LänderTRENDNiedersachsen January 2012 ( memento of the original from October 14, 2013 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. , accessed February 27, 2013
- ^ Abendblatt.de: According to the survey, McAllister is in Weil. In: Abendblatt.de. January 20, 2012, accessed December 17, 2014 .
- ↑ www.landeswahlleiter.niedersachsen.de (PDF file)
- ↑ www.wahlrecht.de
