Hessian state election, 2008

Hesse state election, 2008
All 110 seats of the Landtag of Hesse
Minister-President before election; Roland Koch (acting); CDU	Elected Minister-President ; Roland Koch; CDU

Last updated April 07, 2019

The state election to elect members of the Landtag of Hesse was held in the German state of Hesse on 27 January 2008.

The Landtag of Hesse is the Parliament of the State of Hesse in the Federal Republic of Germany. It convenes in the Stadtschloss, Wiesbaden. As a Legislature it is responsible for passing laws at the state level and enacting the budget. Its most important function is to elect and control the state government. The constitution of the State of Hesse describes the role of the Landtag in §§ 75 to 99.

Hesse or Hessia, officially the State of Hesse, is a federal state (Land) of the Federal Republic of Germany, with just over six million inhabitants. The state capital is Wiesbaden; the largest city is Frankfurt am Main.

Background and issues

For the previous 5 years, Hesse's state government (Landtag) had been ruled by the CDU, which had taken a majority of seats in the 2003 elections.

In the run-up to the election, opinion polls were showing that the CDU had lost popularity. The incumbent CDU minister-president Roland Koch initiated a tough-approach campaign against immigrant youth violence as an electoral tactic.^[1] The German political left attacked it as xenophobic at the time. Other issues were various economic issues including minimum wage concerns, education, and controversy over the planned major expansion of the Rhine-Main airport.

Roland Koch is a German jurist and former conservative politician of the CDU. He was the 7th Minister President of Hesse from 7 April 1999, immediately becoming the 53rd President of the Bundesrat, completing the term begun by his predecessor as Minister President, Hans Eichel, until his resignation on 31 August 2010. During his time in office, Koch was widely regarded as one of Chancellor Angela Merkel's main rivals within the CDU.

A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their workers—the price floor below which workers may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century.

The far-left Linke party stood for elections in Hesse for the first time in 2008, as did the far-right NPD. The generally sour political mood was as "a rising tide lifting the boats" of all non-centrist parties.

Linke is a German surname deriving from the German word meaning "left". It can refer to:

The National Democratic Party of Germany is a far-right and ultranationalist political party in Germany.

Inconclusive outcome

The 2008 election saw the CDU's share of the vote plummet to its lowest level since the 1966 Landtag election. (This abysmal performance by the CDU was also mirrored in the Bavaria state election later that year, which saw CDU/CSU support decline to its lowest level ever.)

The SPD, under its leader Andrea Ypsilanti, increased its share of the vote substantially, from 29% to 37%, and it claimed victory as a result. The other winner—and perhaps the bigger winner overall considering their relative starting positions and the subsequent events in Hesse politics—was the far-left Linke party. They entered the Hesse Landtag with 5.1% of the vote, clearing the five-percent hurdle. This was the second western Landtag in which the Linke party had won seats (the first having been earlier in 2008 in Lower Saxony).

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany.

Andrea Ypsilanti is a German politician.

The electoral threshold is the minimum share of the primary vote which a candidate or political party requires to achieve before they become entitled to any representation in a legislature. This limit can operate in various ways. For example, in party-list proportional representation systems an election threshold requires that a party must receive a specified minimum percentage of votes, either nationally or in a particular electoral district, to obtain any seats in the legislature. In multi-member constituencies using preferential voting, besides the electoral threshold, to be awarded a seat, a candidate is also required to achieve a quota, either on the primary vote or after distribution of preferences, which depends on the number of members to be return from a constituency.

The SPD and the CDU both wound up with 42 seats (of 110). Being that neither was able to form a majority, there was a several-month-long lull, during which no one knew what would happen. The center-right CDU could not form a government with its most natural ally the free-marketist FDP, nor could the center-left SPD with its most natural ally the Greens. And no one wanted a grand coalition of the two centrist parties (SPD and CDU). The far-left Linke party and its 6 seats was thus the kingmaker, exactly the result it had hoped for.^[2]

Ypsilanti had long refused to negotiate with the far-left, but finally caved in and began talks to include them in a red-green-red coalition (SPD-Greens-Linke), with herself as Minister-President. This was a very controversial move, which sparked an internal revolt within the SPD as many members bitterly refused to participate in power-sharing with "neo-Communists"^[3] (the Linke is the successor party to the East German ruling party 1949-1989). In November 2008, one day before Ypsilanti should have been elected Minister-President in the Landtag, four MPs of the Hesse SPD made a vote of no-confidence on her leadership, after which it was clear that no government was able to be formed.^[4] This inconclusive result forced new elections, which were held in January 2009.

Results

e • d **Summary of the 27 January 2008 election results for the Landtag of Hesse**
	Ideology	Vote % (change)		Seats (change)		Seat %
Christian Democratic Union (CDU)	Christian democracy	36.8%	−12.0%	42	−14	38.2%
Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Social democracy	36.7%	+7.6%	42	+9	38.2%
Free Democratic Party (FDP)	Free market	9.4%	+1.5%	11	+2	10.0%
Alliance '90/The Greens (Die Grünen)	Green politics	7.5%	−2.6%	9	−3	8.2%
The Left (Die Linke)	Democratic socialism	5.1%	+5.1%	6	+6	5.5%
The Republicans (Republikaner)	National conservatism	1.0%	−0.3%
Free Voters (Freie Wähler)	Various, lean right	0.9%	+0.9%
National Democratic Party (NPD)	Far-right, ultranationalist	0.9%	+0.9%
Animal Welfare Party (Tierschutzpartei)	Animal rights	0.6%	-0.2%
Family Party (FAMILIEN)	Family advocacy	0.3%	+0.3%
Pirate Party (PIRATEN)	Single-Issue	0.3%	+0.3%
Gray Panthers (Graue)	Pensioner's Advocacy	0.2%	+0.2%
Starting Now (Volksabstimmung)	Far-right	0.1%	+0.1%
The Violets (Violetten)	Spiritualist	0.1%	+0.1%
Independent Citizens' Party (UB)		0.1%	+0.1%
All Others		0.1%	−1.9%
Total		100.0%		110	0	100.0%

Turnout was at 64.3%, slightly down from 64.6% in the 2003 elections.

Popular Vote

CDU			36.81%
SPD			36.69%
FDP			9.43%
B'90/GRÜNE			7.53%
DIE LINKE			5.13%
REP			1.01%
FW			0.89%
NPD			0.88%
Other			1.64%

Landtag seats

CDU			38.18%
SPD			38.18%
FDP			10.00%
B'90/GRÜNE			8.18%
DIE LINKE			5.45%

Pre-election polls

Party	FG	Infra	Emnid	Forsa	FG	Forsa	Infra	TNS	Forsa
Date	11.01.	09.01.	05.01.	12.12.	7.12.	26.09.	06.09.	24.07.	28.06.
CDU	40%	40%	42%	41%	40%	43%	42%	40%	41%
SPD	36%	35%	32%	30%	34%	30 %	32%	33%	27%
Greens	7%	9%	10%	11%	9%	9 %	10%	11%	11%
FDP	8%	9%	8%	9%	7%	8%	8%	7%	9%
The Left	5%	4%	5%	5%	6%	5 %	4%	5%	6%
Other Parties	? %	3%	3%	4%	4%	5 %	4%	4%	6%

FG=Forschungsgruppe Wahlen; Infra=Infratest dimap; TNS=TNS Infratest

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References

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[1] ttp://www.netzeitung.de/deutschland/883191.html

[2] ttps://www.derwesten.de/nachrichten/2008/1/28/news-19224423/detail.html

[3] ttp://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/hessen-vierer-bande-stoppt-ypsilanti_aid_345769.html

[4] ttp://www.die-topnews.de/hessen-ypsilanti-wahl-geplatzt-324302

v t e Elections and referendums in Hesse
Elections	1919 1921 1924 1927 1931 1932 1933 1946 1950 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1983 1987 1991 1995 1999 2003 2008 2009 2013 2018
Referendums	1926