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An indirect presidential election (officially the 7th Federal Convention) was held in West Germany on 23 May 1979. Deeming his reelection to be unlikely, incumbent Walter Scheel elected not to seek a second term. The two candidates to replace him were the President of the Bundestag Karl Carstens, nominated by the Christian Democratic Union and Carstens' immediate predecessor Annemarie Renger, nominated by the Social Democratic Party. Carstens won the election on the first ballot.
The President is elected by the Federal Convention consisting of all the members of the Bundestag and an equal number of delegates representing the states. These are divided proportionally by population to each state, and each state's delegation is divided among the political parties represented in its parliament so as to reflect the partisan proportions in the parliament.
| By Party | By State | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Members | State | Members |
| CDU/CSU | 531 | Bundestag | 518 |
| SPD | 438 | Baden-Württemberg | 75 |
| FDP | 66 | Bavaria | 92 |
| Independents | 1 | Berlin | 16 |
| Total | 1036 | Bremen | 6 |
| Hamburg | 14 | ||
| Hesse | 46 | ||
| Lower Saxony | 63 | ||
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 143 | ||
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 31 | ||
| Saarland | 9 | ||
| Schleswig-Holstein | 23 | ||
| Total | 1036 | ||
Source: Eine Dokumentation aus Anlass der Wahl des Bundespräsidenten am 18. März 2012
| Candidate | Parties | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Karl Carstens | CDU/CSU | 528 | 51.0 |
| Annemarie Renger | SPD | 431 | 41.6 |
| Abstentions | 72 | 6.9 | |
| Invalid votes | 1 | 0.1 | |
| Not present | 4 | 0.4 | |
| Total | 1,036 | 100 | |
| Source Bundestag | |||
The Bundestag is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people, comparable to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany and thus it is the historical successor to the earlier Reichstag.
The president of Germany, officially titled the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of state of Germany.
Karl Carstens was a German politician. He served as the president of West Germany from 1979 to 1984.
An indirect presidential election was held in Germany on 23 May 2004.
The Federal Convention, also known as the Federal Assembly, is, together with the Joint Committee, one of two non-standing constitutional bodies in the federal institutional system of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is convened solely for the purpose of electing the President of Germany, either every five years or within 30 days of the premature termination of a presidential term. The Federal Convention consists of all members of the German federal parliament (Bundestag) and the same number of delegates from the 16 federated states. Those delegates are elected by the state parliaments for this purpose only.
Federal elections were held in West Germany on 6 March 1983 to elect the members of the 10th Bundestag. The CDU/CSU alliance led by Helmut Kohl remained the largest faction in parliament, with Kohl remaining Chancellor.
The German federal election system regulates the election of the members of the national parliament, called the Bundestag. According to the principles governing the elections laws, set down in Art. 38 of the German Basic Law, elections are to be universal, direct, free, equal, and secret. Furthermore, the German Basic Law stipulates that Bundestag elections are to take place every four years and that one can vote, and be elected, upon reaching the age of 18. All other stipulations for the federal elections are regulated by the Federal Electoral Act. Elections always take place on a Sunday. Mail votes are possible upon application.
An indirect presidential election saw the former Social democrat Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia defeat Christian democrat Dagmar Schipanski and the nonpartisan academic Uta Ranke-Heinemann, who had been endorsed by the Party of Democratic Socialism.
An indirect presidential election was held in Germany on 23 May 1994. Incumbent president Richard von Weizsäcker was term-limited and could therefore not stand for reelection. Roman Herzog, candidate for the Christian Democratic Union, was elected in three rounds of voting.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 23 May 1989. The only candidate was incumbent President Richard von Weizsäcker, who had the support of all four major parties. It is so far the only time that a presidential candidate ran unopposed. It was also the last presidential election held before German reunification.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 23 May 1984. Though not term limited, incumbent Karl Carstens elected not to seek a second term. His Christian Democratic Union instead nominated Richard von Weizsäcker, the Governing Mayor of West Berlin. The Greens, who were represented at the Federal Convention for the first time, nominated author Luise Rinser. The SPD and FDP elected not to nominate candidates. Weizsäcker won the election with 80% of the vote on the first ballot.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 23 May 1974. Though not term limited, incumbent Gustav Heinemann chose not to seek a second term. The government parties nominated Vice-Chancellor Walter Scheel; the Christian Democratic Union nominated Richard von Weizsäcker. Scheel won the election by 32 votes on the first ballot. He served as president until 1979. Weizsäcker would later serve as president from 1984 to 1994.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 5 March 1969. The incumbent President, Heinrich Lübke had served two terms and was therefore ineligible for a third. The Christian Democratic Union nominated defense minister Gerhard Schröder. Schröder was a controversial choice, even within his own party, since he had been a member of the NSDAP and the SA under Hitler. Other potential candidates included Helmut Kohl and Richard von Weizsäcker, relatively unknown names at the time, who would go on to serve as Chancellor and President respectively. Justice Minister Gustav Heinemann was nominated by the Social Democratic Party and supported by the opposition Free Democratic Party. With neither candidate able to win an absolute majority, Heinemann won the election on the third ballot by only 6 votes.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 1 July 1964. President Heinrich Lübke was renominated by the Christian Democratic Union. The Free Democratic Party nominated justice minister Ewald Bucher. The Social Democratic Party was divided. The official party line was that they supported President Lübke's re-election. Some have speculated this was a first move towards the grand-coalition that brought Kurt Kiesinger to power two years later. However, the high number of abstentions seems to indicate that not all members of the SPD caucus agreed with this move, as does the fact that Ewald Bucher received at least 19 votes from outside his own party.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 1 July 1959. For the first time in the Federal Republic, the incumbent president, Theodor Heuss, was not eligible for reelection. In the buildup to the election, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer initially declared his candidacy, but then withdrew for political reasons. The Christian Democratic Union instead nominated Heinrich Lübke. The Social Democrats nominated Carlo Schmid who had been the party's caucus chair at the Parliamentary Council. The Free Democratic Party nominated the chair of its Bundestag caucus, Max Becker. Like the first contested presidential election ten years prior, it took two rounds to determine a winner. Heinrich Lübke fell two votes short of the absolute majority in the first round, winning the election with 526 votes in the second.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 17 July 1954. The government parties and the opposition SPD renominated incumbent Theodor Heuss. Against his wishes, the Communist Party of Germany nominated Alfred Weber. Heuss was reelected on the first ballot with about 85% of the vote.
An indirect presidential election was held on 12 February 2017 to elect the 12th President of Germany. Incumbent President Joachim Gauck announced on 6 June 2016 that he would not stand for re-election, citing his advancing age.
An indirect presidential election was held in Germany on 13 February 2022 to elect the next president of Germany.
Gero Clemens Hocker is a German economist and politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Lower Saxony since 2017.
Christian Jung is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) who has been serving as a member of the State Parliament of Baden-Württemberg since the 2021 elections. He was previously a member of the Bundestag from 2017 until 2021.
