Official election result

For a change, with all the small parties above 0.1% included:

• Participation: 77.65%
• Invalid votes: 1.57% list votes, 1.77% direct mandate votes
  (below: parties in percentage of valid list votes)
• CDU/CSU: 35.17%, 226 seats
  - of this CDU (Christian Democrats): 27.78%, 180 seats
  - CSU (Christian Socialists[Bavaria]): 7.39%, 46 seats
• SPD (Social Democrats): 34.25%, 222 seats
• FDP (Free Democrats, [market]liberals): 9.83%, 61 seats
• Linke (Left Party, hard left): 8.71%, 54 seats
• Grüne (Greens): 8.12%, 51 seats
  all parties in parliament (representation ratio): 96.07% of valid votes, 73.43% of all entitled to vote
• NPD (National Democrats, far-right): 1.58%
• Republikaner (Republicans, far-right): 0.563%
• Graue (Greys, senior party): 0.420%
• Familie (Family party): 0.406%
• Tierschutzpartei (Animal protection party): 0.234%
• PBC (Bible-Faithful Christians): 0.230%

Some regional trends

The far-right NPD fortunately stayed below 5% in all 16 provinces. In Saxony, where at the last provincial elections it got double digits, they had 4.78%. However, strangely, the NPD direct candidates got significantly more votes than the party list: of these votes, their national share was 1.82%, and in Saxony, 4.98%.

The Left Party passed 5% in six out of ten West German regions. The Greens still failed to get 5% in four out of six East German provinces, tough they increased (to above 4%) in all four.

Women in parliamentary factions

1. Grüne: 56.9% (29/51)
2. Linke: 48.1% (26/54)
3. SPD: 36.0% (80/222)
4. FDP: 26.2% (16/61)
5. CDU/CSU: 19.5% (45/226)
   - CDU: 20.6% (37/180)
   - CSU: 15.2% (7/46)
   Total: 31.8% (195/614)

Yeah, this is pretty much what you'd expect... maybe the only less obvious part is the low number for the liberals; but as said during the campaign coverage, today's FDP has not much progressive about it... Then again, women in leadership positions are rare - Merkel is an exception to the rule in the CDU, and Renate Künast of the Greens (also outgoing consumer protection minister) is the only other female faction leader.

For comparison, in the US Congress, 15.2% of the House (66/435) and 14% of the Senate (14/100) are women. Even among Democrats, just 21.3% in the House (43/202) and 20.4% in the Senate (9/44); while Republicans 'beat' the Bavarian CSU (just below 10% in both chambers).

Turkish origin

1. Linke: 3 (5.6%)
2. Grüne: 1 (2%)
3. SPD: 1 (0.45%)
4. FDP, CDU, CSU: 0
   Total: 5 (0.81%)

The average is near the ratio of Turkish-origin German citizens (0.9%). In the Left Party, MPs of Turkish origin have a share even exceeding that in the general population (=citizens+residents; the figure is 3%, of which one quarter is German citizen, and a further quarter was born in Germany but is Turkish citizen.)

Left Party demographics

Is this party really the onetime East German dictatoral communist party (SED) in disguise? I think the numbers show: not really anymore.

• 30 MPs came from East German constituencies or provincial party lists, 24 from West German ones.
• However, one East-German-born and ten West-German-born MPs moved since reunification, or were just put on a list elsewhere: hence, only 21 MPs come from the former communist East Germany, and 33 from former West Germany!
• Six MPs, and three of the East German-born ones, are not older than 31 years - not old enough to have been a Party member.
• This leaves 18 (a third) old enough for possibly having had tainted themselves, and at least two of them weren't SED members/functionaries.

On the other hand, while I'm not one who thinks membership in the onetime One Party shouls automatically disqualify someone, a generation change would do good.