page_title: 2013 German federal election
section_title: Results
hierarchical_section_title: 2013 German federal election / Results
caption_attribution_description: Español: Mapa electoral de Alemania en .png del 2013
context_page_description: Federal elections were held on 22 September to elect the members of the 18th Bundestag of Germany. At stake were all 598 seats to the Bundestag, plus 33 overhang seats determined thereafter. The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union of Chancellor Angela Merkel won their best result since 1990, with nearly 42% of the vote and nearly 50% of the seats. However, their coalition partner, the Free Democrats, failed to meet the 5% vote threshold in what was their worst showing ever in a federal election, thus denying them seats in the Bundestag for the first time in their history.
  Merkel's party reached a coalition agreement with the then-main opposition party, the Social Democrats, to form a grand coalition; the third in the country's history since World War II. The SPD leadership conducted a ratification vote by their broader membership before the agreement was made final.
context_section_description: The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) scored 42 percent of the vote, their best result since tallying 44% in the 1990 election.  Since some 15 percent of the vote went to parties that fell short of the 5% threshold, the CDU/CSU came up just five seats short of a majority. The Free Democratic Party (FDP), junior partner in the outgoing coalition government, failed to pass the 5% threshold.  It failed to win any directly elected seats either (it has not won any directly elected seats since 1990), thus shutting it out of the Bundestag altogether for the first time in the party's history. A new eurosceptic party, the Alternative for Germany, nearly won seats but like the FDP was shut out by narrowly missing the 5% threshold. This also meant that only four parties were present in the Bundestag for the first time since the 1987 election (CDU/CSU operate as one Bundestag group).
  Gysi was the leading candidate on a list of 8 top candidates appointed by the party congress. The others were Sahra Wagenknecht, Jan van Aken, Dietmar Bartsch, Klaus Ernst, Nicole Goehlke, Diana Golze and Caren Lay
  Ran in Mettmann I (lost).
  Ran in Harburg (electoral district) (lost).
  Ran in Göttingen (electoral district) (lost).
  Ran in Erfurt – Weimar – Weimarer Land II (lost).
  Ran in Mainz (electoral district) (lost).
  The Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria call themselves sister parties. They do not compete against each other in the same geographical regions and they form one group within the Bundestag.
caption: Parliamentary districts won by
   ■ – CDU ■ – CSU ■ – SPD ■ – The Left ■ – Greens
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