On 14 October the Federal Returning Officer announced the official result of the 17th German Bundestag elections on 27 September 2009.

With a voter turnout of 70.8 percent (2005: 77.7 percent), the parties obtained the following shares of the total number of valid second votes cast:

SPD 23.0 percent (2005: 34.2) CDU 27.3 percent (2005: 27.8) FDP 14.6 percent (2005: 9.8) The Left Party 11.9 percent (2005: 8.7) Alliance 90/The Greens 10.7 percent (2005: 8.1) CSU 6.5 percent (2005: 7.4) Others 6.0 percent (2005: 3.9).

In the 2009 Bundestag elections, 1.5 percent of the second votes were invalid (2005: 1.6 percent).

1.7 percent of the first votes cast in the 2009 Bundestag election were invalid (2005: 1.8 percent).

In accordance with Section 1 (1) of the Federal Elections Act, the newly elected Bundestag will consist of the 598 Members of the Bundestag required by law plus 24 Members elected as ‘overhang mandates’ (additional seats as a result of parties winning more constituency seats than their share of the second vote would entitle them to). The total number of Members of the Bundestag will therefore be 622 (2005: 614 Members).

According to the official result, the following parties will be represented with the following number of seats (including overhang mandates) in the 17th German Bundestag:

SPD 146 seats (2005: 222) including 64 constituency seats (2005:145) CDU 194 seats (2005:180) including 173 constituency seats (2005: 106) FDP 93 seats (2005: 61) including 0 constituency seats (2005: 0) The Left Party 76 seats (2005: 54) including 16 constituency seats (2005: 3) Alliance 90/The Greens 68 seats (2005: 51) including 1 constituency seats (2005: 1) CSU 45 seats (2005: 46) including 45 constituency seats (2005: 44).

The distribution of seats in the Länder (federal states), including the number of Land list seats won by each party, is available in a table on the Federal Returning Officer’s website.

This website also offers comprehensive further information and tables concerning the 2009 Bundestag election.

According to the official result, the overhang mandates are distributed among the following parties as follows:

CDU: 21 overhang mandates including:

• 1 in Schleswig-Holstein
• 2 in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
• 4 in Saxony
• 1 in Thuringia
• 2 in Rhineland-Palatinate
• 10 in Baden-Württemberg
• 1 in Saarland

CSU: 3 overhang mandates in Bavaria

The other parties did not gain any overhang mandates.

The provisional results of the 2009 Bundestag election for the Federation, the Länder and the individual constituencies are available on the Federal Returning Officer’s website:

www.bundeswahlleiter.de

Issue no. 3 “Endgültige Ergebnisse nach Wahlkreisen” (Final results by constituency), a publication from the Federal Returning Officer on the 2009 Bundestag election, also contains a record of the final results. It can be downloaded free of charge as a pdf file from the Federal Returning Officer’s website.

The printed edition may also be obtained from booksellers or ordered directly from the Federal Statistical Office’s Publication Service at a price of EUR 18.- per copy:

www.destatis.de/publikationen

The Federal Returning Officer expressed his sincere thanks to the more than 600,000 volunteers on the electoral boards. “Your commitment has made a vital contribution to the successful conduct of the 2009 Bundestag election and provides an important service to our democracy.” He also extended his sincere thanks to the thousands of people working at the electoral offices, authorities or the Deutsche Post postal services who ensured the election process ran smoothly.

 

For further information please contact:
Margitta von Schwartzenberg,
tel: (+49-611) 75-2754,
e-mail: bundeswahlleiter@destatis.de