The 2018 Bavarian state election took place on 14 October 2018 to elect the 180 members of the 18th

Landtag of Bavaria The Landtag of Bavaria, officially known in English as the Bavarian State Parliament, is the unicameral legislature of the German state of Bavaria. The parliament meets in the Maximilianeum in Munich. Elections to the Landtag are held every ...

.Wahltermine
/ref> The outgoing government was a majority of the

Christian Social Union in Bavaria The Christian Social Union in Bavaria ( German: , CSU) is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. Having a regionalist identity, the CSU operates only in Bavaria while its larger counterpart, the Christian Democra ...

(CSU), led by Minister President

Markus Söder Markus Thomas Theodor Söder (born 5 January 1967) is a German politician from Bavaria, Germany serving as List of Ministers-President of Bavaria, Minister-President of Bavaria since 2018 and Leader of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, lead ...

. The CSU recorded its worst result since

1950 Events January * January 1 – The International Police Association (IPA) – the largest police organization in the world – is formed. * January 5 – 1950 Sverdlovsk plane crash, Sverdlovsk plane crash: ''Aeroflot'' Lisunov Li-2 ...

with 37% of votes, a decline of over ten

percentage points A percentage point or percent point is the unit (measurement), unit for the difference (mathematics), arithmetic difference between two percentages. For example, moving up from 40 percent to 44 percent is an increase of 4 percentage points (altho ...

, although it remained by far the largest party in the Landtag. The SPD, which had previously been the second largest party, fell to fifth place with just 10%. The Greens gained 9 points and emerged as the second strongest party with 17.5%. The Free Voters of Bavaria (FW) gained 2.6 points and finished third with 11.6% of the total vote. The

Alternative for Germany Alternative for Germany (, AfD, ) is a Far-right politics in Germany (1945–present), far-right,Far-right: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Right-wing populism, right-wing populist and National conservatism, national-conservative p ...

(AfD), which ran in Bavaria for the first time, placed fourth with 10%. The Free Democratic Party (FDP), which failed to enter the Landtag in 2013, narrowly re-entered with 5.1%, becoming the smallest party. Turnout rose to 72%, up 9 points from under 64% in 2013.Landtagswahl am 14. Oktober 2018
. ''Der Landeswahlleiter des Freistaates Bayern''. Retrieved 1 December 2018. The election was influenced by the condition of the federal CDU/CSU–SPD government following two crises in the preceding months: the so-called asylum quarrel in June and July followed by the controversy around Hans-Georg Maaßen in September. CSU leader Horst Seehofer played a major role in both events. Four days before the Bavarian election, federal SPD leader Andrea Nahles criticised Chancellor Angela Merkel, accusing her of a "lack of leadership". As a result of the election, the CSU lacked a majority and formed a coalition government with the Free Voters.

Election date and preparation deadlines

According to the Bavarian Constitution, the election must be held on a Sunday "at the earliest 59 months, at the latest 62 months" after the preceding state elections which took place on 15 September 2013. This would theoretically allow an election date between 19 August and 11 November 2018, but in practice the elections since 1978 have always taken place between mid-September and mid-October. The Bavarian state government proposed 14 October 2018 as the election date on 9 January 2018 and officially set it on 20 February after hearing the parties to the state parliament. The deadline for determining the population figures, which are decisive for the distribution of the 180

Landtag A ''Landtag'' (State Diet) is generally the legislative assembly or parliament of a federated state or other subnational self-governing entity in German-speaking nations. It is usually a unicameral assembly exercising legislative competence ...

mandates among the seven Bavarian administrative districts and a possible new division of the constituencies, was 15 June 2016 (33 months after the election of the previous Landtag). On this basis, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior had to submit a constituency report to the Landtag until 36 months after the election This was done on 6 September 2016. Delegates to the internal constituency meetings could be appointed at the earliest 43 months after the preceding election, i.e. since 16 April 2017. The actual district candidates had been eligible since 16 July 2017. The parties and other organised electoral groups which had not been represented continuously in the Bavarian Land Parliament or in the German Bundestag since their last election on the basis of their own election proposals ( CDU, CSU, SPD, Free Voters of Bavaria, Alliance 90/The Greens, FDP, Die Linke, AfD) had to notify their intention to participate to the State Election Commissioner by the 90th day before the election, i.e. by 16 July 2018 at the latest. The actual election proposals and any necessary signatures had to be submitted by 2 August 2018.

Electoral system

DE-BY Landtagswahl 2018 SK 104 Stimmzettel Zweitstimme

Bavaria, in line with the rest of the country, uses

mixed-member proportional representation Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP or MMPR) is a type of representation provided by some mixed electoral system, mixed electoral systems which combine local Winner-take-all system, winner-take-all elections with a Compensation (el ...

to elect its members of the Landtag. Party representation is not apportioned statewide, the distribution of seats takes place separately within the seven administrative districts (), which are referred to in the electoral law as constituencies. The constituencies are divided into districts in which one member is directly elected. The number of single member districts is about half the number of seats in the constituency. In contrast to the

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet (assembly), Diet") is the lower house of the Germany, German Federalism in Germany, federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag wa ...

election law, the distribution of seats by proportional representation takes into account the parties' aggregate first (district) votes combined with their second (constituency) votes, i.e. both the first and second votes affect the distribution of seats in the Landtag, as opposed to just the second votes, which is the norm elsewhere in the country. If a party wins more district seats in a constituency than it would be entitled to based on a strictly proportional system (these extra seats are termed overhang seats), this seats are added to the constituency. To compensate the other parties for the overhang, leveling seats are added at the constituency level too. There is no statewide adjustment of the seats. Only parties and groups of voters who obtain at least 5% of the total votes (sum of first and second votes) in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

participate in the distribution of seats. This threshold also applies to winning single-member districts; a party will forfeit all its district seats that it won if the party did not meet the 5% statewide threshold, with the forfeited district seats going to the second-place candidate. Unlike the other German states (and also countries using MMP), Bavaria uses an open-list system for its party-list seats. Voters not only cast a vote for a candidate in their district, but they also cast a vote for a list candidate in their region. For the distribution of list seats, all district candidates are also constituency candidates with their parties. The party may also nominate regional-only candidates. To prevent double voting, the constituency ballots in each district omit the candidates running in that district. A candidate (if he or she did not win his or her district) is ranked within his or her list by the number of first votes he or she receives within the district plus the number of second votes he or she receives from voters elsewhere in the region. In this manner, voters collectively can produce a list that is different from what the party submitted, which can result in the defeat of candidates that would have been elected (and vice versa) had the election taken place under a closed-list system.

Boundary changes

In the statutory constituency report of September 2016, the state government stated that the numerical distribution of the 180 state parliament seats among the constituencies would have to be changed due to changes in the number of inhabitants. It was recommended that a seat previously to be awarded in the

Lower Franconia Lower Franconia (, ) is one of seven districts of Bavaria, Germany. The districts of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia make up the region of Franconia. It consists of nine districts and 308 municipalities (including three cities). History After ...

constituency be allocated to the Upper Bavaria constituency. Within Upper Bavaria, the additional seat was used to reshape the single member districts in the state capital of

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, as two of them — Giesing and Milbertshofen — exceeded the average population by more than 15 percent. Upper Bavaria now has 31 single member districts for the 2018 elections, nine of which are accounted for by the state capital. Seats and single member districts are distributed as follows:

Gerrymandering

In March 2017, the CSU used the mandatory redistricting to redraw Munich's electoral districts. In this, they were accused of gerrymandering; redistricting created a new ''Stimmkreis München-Mitte'' that was ''packing'' all parts of Munich that at the time favored the SPD. The Greens eventually won the district by a huge margin. The CSU was only partly successful in their gerrymandering, as they still lost four districts in Munich that were drawn to their advantage.

Starting position

Since the state elections in Bavaria in 2013, the CSU again had the absolute majority of seats, as it did from 1962 to 2008. The CSU also held the position of the senior partner in all but one governing coalition in Bavaria since the end of World War II, including every coalition since 1958. In December 2017, however, Minister President of Bavaria Horst Seehofer (CSU) finally declared his renunciation of the top candidate in the state elections in Bavaria in 2018, partly due to the poor performance of the CSU in the 2017 Bundestag elections. In March 2018, he also resigned from his office as Minister President of Bavaria before the end of the parliamentary term. The former Bavarian Finance Minister

was elected as the new top CSU candidate and later also as Minister President of Bavaria in the state parliament.

Campaign

CSU

In 2018, the CSU

's government enacted the '' Kreuzpflicht'', an obligation to display

cross A cross is a religious symbol consisting of two Intersection (set theory), intersecting Line (geometry), lines, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of t ...

es at the entrance of public buildings. Söder has stated that the crosses are not to be seen as Christian symbols, but as symbols of Bavarian cultural identity. Some observers have described the ''Kreuzpflicht'' as a measure to appeal to voters deserting the

Christian democratic Christian democracy is an ideology inspired by Christian social teaching to respond to the challenges of contemporary society and politics. Christian democracy has drawn mainly from Catholic social teaching and neo-scholasticism, as well ...

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

CSU for the right-wing nationalist AfD party. Also the CSU interior minister Horst Seehofer has taken a harder line on immigration.

Parties

The table below lists parties represented in the 17th Landtag of Bavaria since 2013. The AfD, having been founded earlier that year, did not run yet.

Leaders' debate

A leaders' debate between Minister President

(CSU) and Ludwig Hartmann (Alliance 90/The Greens) took place on 26 September 2018. The

Bayerischer Rundfunk (; "Bavarian Broadcasting"), shortened to BR (), is a public broadcasting, public-service radio and television broadcaster, based in Munich, capital city of the Bavaria, Free State of Bavaria in Germany. BR is a member organization of the ARD (b ...

justified the party selection with the result of the ''Bayerntrend'' of September 12, 2018, according to which CSU and Greens can hope for the most votes in the election. SPD Secretary-General Uli Grötsch described this decision as "completely absurd". A programme with representatives of the other five parties, whose survey results were above or close to the five percent hurdle, followed on 28 September 2018: Natascha Kohnen (SPD),

Hubert Aiwanger Hubert Aiwanger (born 26 January 1971) is a German politician and party leader of the Free Voters (German: ''Freie Wähler'') since 2018, the Deputy Minister President of Bavaria and Bavarian Minister of Economic affairs, Regional Development an ...

(Free Voters), Martin Sichert (AfD), Martin Hagen (FDP) and Ates Gürpinar (The Left). The first programme was moderated by BR

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The editor-in-chief heads all departments of the organization and is held accoun ...

Christian Nitsche, the second by Ursula Heller.

Opinion polling

Policy areas relevant to elections

On behalf of the RTL/ n-tv ''Trendbarometer'', Forsa Institute interviewed the survey participants about the "biggest problems at state level". In Bavaria, 34 percent of those surveyed named the CSU and Prime Minister Markus Söder, 28 percent named

refugees A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as ...

, and 26 percent named "the situation on the housing market". Infratest dimap asked respondents to the ARD primary election survey which topic is very important for their election decision. In the order of most percentage points these were school and education policy (55%), nature conservation in Bavaria (46%), creation of affordable housing (45%), reduction of injustice in society (41%), security and police (40%), regulation of immigration (39%), the behaviour of Horst Seehofer in the federal government (26%), the cooperation of CDU, CSU and SPD in the federal government (21%).

Voter turnout

The voter turnout in the city of

remained high. Until 2 p.m. it was 54.6 percent including the postal voters. In 2013, the turnout at that time was 49.7 percent. The final total turnout was recorded as 72.3% of eligible voters.

Election result

, - bgcolor="#E9E9E9" , - , colspan=9, , - ! colspan="2" , Party ! Ideology ! Votes ! colspan="2" , Votes % (change) ! colspan="2" , Seats (change) ! Seats % , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" , Christian Social Union (CSU) , align="left" ,

Christian democracy Christian democracy is an ideology inspired by Christian social teaching to respond to the challenges of contemporary society and politics. Christian democracy has drawn mainly from Catholic social teaching and neo-scholasticism, as well ...

, align="right" , 5,046,081 , align="right" , 37.2% , align="right" , , align="right" , 85 , align="right" , , align="right" , 41.5% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" , Alliance '90/The Greens (Grünen) , align="left" ,

Green politics Green politics, or ecopolitics, is a political ideology that aims to foster an ecologically sustainable society often, but not always, rooted in environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice and grassroots democracy.#Wal10, Wall 2010. p. 12-13. ...

, align="right" , 2,392,356 , align="right" , 17.6% , align="right" , , align="right" , 38 , align="right" , , align="right" , 18.5% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" ,

Free Voters Free Voters (, FW) is a political party in Germany. It originates as an umbrella organisation of several Free Voters Associations (), associations of people which participate in an election without having the status of a registered party. These a ...

(FW) , align="left" , Regionalism , align="right" , 1,572,792 , align="right" , 11.6% , align="right" , , align="right" , 27 , align="right" , , align="right" , 13.2% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" ,

(AfD) , align="left" , German nationalism , align="right" , 1,388,622 , align="right" , 10.2% , align="right" , , align="right" , 22 , align="right" , , align="right" , 10.7% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" , Social Democratic Party (SPD) , align="left" ,

Social democracy Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...

, align="right" , 1,309,078 , align="right" , 9.7% , align="right" , , align="right" , 22 , align="right" , , align="right" , 10.7% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" , Free Democratic Party (FDP) , align="left" ,

Liberalism Liberalism is a Political philosophy, political and moral philosophy based on the Individual rights, rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law. ...

, align="right" , 690,499 , align="right" , 5.1% , align="right" , , align="right" , 11 , align="right" , , align="right" , 5.4% , - ! colspan=9, , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" , The Left (Die Linke) , align="left" ,

Democratic socialism Democratic socialism is a left-wing economic ideology, economic and political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and wor ...

, align="right" , 437,888 , align="right" , 3.2% , align="right" , , align="right" , 0 , align="right" , ±0 , align="right" , 0% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" ,

Bavaria Party The Bavaria Party (, BP) is an autonomist, regionalist and conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The cen ...

(BP) , align="left" , Bavarian nationalism , align="right" , 231,731 , align="right" , 1.7% , align="right" , , align="right" , 0 , align="right" , ±0 , align="right" , 0% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" , Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP) , align="left" , Green conservatism , align="right" , 211,951 , align="right" , 1.6% , align="right" , , align="right" , 0 , align="right" , ±0 , align="right" , 0% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" ,

Pirate Party Pirate Party is a label adopted by various Political party, political parties worldwide that share a set of values and policies focused on Civil and political rights, civil rights in the digital age. The fundamental principles of Pirate Partie ...

() , align="left" , Pirate politics , align="right" , 59,145 , align="right" , 0.4% , align="right" , , align="right" , 0 , align="right" , ±0 , align="right" , 0% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="#EE1D23" align="center" , , align="left" , Party for Franconia () , align="left" , Regionalism , align="right" , 31,453 , align="right" , 0.2% , align="right" , , align="right" , 0 , align="right" , ±0 , align="right" , 0% , - , style="width: 1px" bgcolor="" align="center" , , align="left" , Others , align="left" , , align="right" , 193,151 , align="right" , , align="right" , , align="right" , 0 , align="right" , ±0 , align="right" , 0% , - ! align="right" colspan=2, Total ! align="right" , ! align="right" , 13,564,747 ! align="right" , 100.0% ! align="right" , ! align="right" , 205 ! align="right" , +25 ! align="right" ,

Aftermath

Preferred coalition polling

The percentages indicate the proportion of respondents who would most like the particular coalition available for selection. The percentages do not sum to 100% due to respondents who did not indicate a preference.

State government formation

Before the election, CSU faction leader Thomas Kreuzer declared that the CSU would not form a coalition with the AfD or the Greens after the election. The CSU agreed on a coalition deal to govern with the Free Voters of Bavaria on 4 November 2018.Bavarian conservatives and Free Voters reach coalition deal
POLITICO (Europe edition). Author - Joshua Posaner. Published 4 November 2018. Updated 5 November 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.

References

External links

{{2018 elections in Germany 2018 elections in Germany 2018 in Bavaria

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