1979 West German presidential election

1979 West German presidential election

←  1974 23 May 1979 1984  →

Nominee Karl Carstens Annemarie Renger Party CDU SPD Electoral vote 528 431

President before election Walter Scheel FDP Elected President Karl Carstens CDU

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. ^{[1] [2]}

Composition of the Federal Convention

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

Results

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

References

1. Vinocur, John (24 May 1979). "Ex‐Nazi Voted West German President". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 March 2025.
2. Getler, Michael (23 May 1979). "W. Germans Elect Ex-Nazi Carstens To Presidency". The Washington Post. Retrieved 6 March 2025.