State election in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1980
The election to the Landtag for the 9th electoral term of North Rhine-Westphalia took place on May 11, 1980. In 1979 the number of mandates and constituencies was increased by one to 201 and 151 respectively, and the constituency was changed significantly.
The SPD entered the election campaign for the first time with Johannes Rau at the helm, who had replaced Heinz Kühn as Prime Minister in 1978. As in 1970 and 1975, the top candidate of the CDU was Heinrich Köppler , who fell ill during the election campaign and died on April 20, three weeks before the election. The CDU then set up Kurt Biedenkopf , the former Secretary General of the Federal CDU and chairman of the CDU regional association Westphalia-Lippe. The FDP's top candidate was Liselotte Funcke , who in November 1979, after disputes in the party, replaced the then state chairman Horst Ludwig Riemer as Minister of Economics. State political issues played a minor role in the election campaign after the dispute over the introduction of the cooperative school had ended with a success for the CDU: After a referendum directed against it and supported by the CDU was supported by 29.8% of the electorate, the state parliament made the introduction of the cooperative school reversed. The election was later held in a sign of just five months federal elections . The SPD campaigned heavily with Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in order to benefit from his popularity and the aversion of part of the electorate to Schmidt's opponent in the federal election, Franz Josef Strauss .
The state election brought the SPD an absolute majority of mandates for the first time with 48.4% of the vote. In the state elections in 1966 she had 49.5% of the vote, but did not receive an absolute majority of the seats.
For the CDU, the election meant a clear defeat with a loss of almost four percentage points. The FDP was 1,701 votes below the 5% hurdle . The Greens appearing for the first time, who had achieved 5.3% eight weeks earlier in Baden-Württemberg , failed even more clearly with almost three percent at the 5% hurdle. For the first time and to this day (as of 2017) only two parties were represented in the state parliament.
- Eligible voters: 12,342,282
- Voters: 9,874,427
- Turnout: 80.00%
- Valid votes: 9,818,518
| Political party | agree completely |
Share in% |
Electoral kreisbe- tors |
Direct MAN date |
Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPD | 4,756,103 | 48.44 | 151 | 94 | 106 |
| CDU | 4,240,885 | 43.19 | 151 | 57 | 95 |
| FDP | 489.225 | 4.98 | 151 | ||
| GREEN | 291,379 | 2.97 | 151 | ||
| DKP | 30,441 | 0.31 | 151 | ||
| Citizens Party | 5,410 | 0.06 | 22nd | ||
| KBW | 2,282 | 0.02 | 98 | ||
| center | 1,562 | 0.02 | 11 | ||
| EAP | 649 | 0.01 | 23 | ||
| UNU | 200 | 0.00 | 7th | ||
| UAP | 180 | 0.00 | 6th | ||
| EFP | 92 | 0.00 | 3 | ||
| GPD | 38 | 0.00 | 1 | ||
| Individual applicants | 72 | 0.00 | 1 | ||
| Total | 9,818,518 | 927 | 151 | 201 |
Johannes Rau was re-elected Prime Minister on June 4, 1980 with 105 votes, 91 against and two abstentions, and on the same day the rest of the cabinet, consisting only of SPD members, was sworn in. This marked the beginning of 15 years of the SPD's sole government in North Rhine-Westphalia.
At the federal level, the SPD's good performance aroused great expectations for the upcoming Bundestag election in October of that year , which, however, were not to be fully met.
See also
- Cabinet Rau II
- List of state electoral districts in North Rhine-Westphalia 1980
- List of members of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia (9th electoral term)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spiegel 21/1980
- ↑ Minutes of the Landtag session of June 4, 1980 (PDF; 758 kB)
