Cheers among the Free Voters and the AfD, disappointment among the Liberals – the election evening in Bavaria has mixed feelings for the candidates of the various parties. According to the first forecasts at 6 p.m. from Infratest Dimap on Bayerischer Rundfunk, it looks as if the new Bavarian state parliament will only have five parties. The FDP misses the return to the state parliament. This was already apparent in the polls.
The CSU remains about the same strength, 36.7 percent says the first projection (6:34 p.m.) from the elections research group. In 2018 it reached 37.2 percent, a historically poor result up to that point. The Free Voters are gaining ground and reaching 14 percent, which means a significant increase compared to the 11.6 percent in 2018, although not as big as polls had recently predicted. It looks like the two parties will be able to continue their government coalition.
Prime Minister and CSU leading candidate Markus Söder had already announced this so early on that it was clear throughout the election campaign that he did not even want other options to be discussed. “There will be no black-green in Bavaria,” was one of his often-used sentences.
For the Greens, as for the other traffic light parties, the dissatisfaction of many people with the federal government in Berlin is evidently noticeable. They cannot maintain their strongest result to date of 17.6 percent in 2018. According to the projection, they come to 15.6 percent.
The AfD would become the strongest opposition party with 15.8 percent – but that is still uncertain. It also increases significantly compared to the 10.2 percent in 2018. The SPD has fallen below its historically poor result from five years ago (9.7 percent) and only achieved 8.5 percent. The FDP missed out on entry with three percent.
Around 9.4 million eligible voters were called upon to elect the state parliament for the next five years; including half a million first-time voters. Voter turnout increased significantly to 76.0 percent. Five years ago, overall voter turnout was 72.3 percent.
A total of 91 direct and 89 list mandates are up for grabs in the state elections. However, due to overhang and compensatory mandates, there can be more than 180 representatives – in the old state parliament there were 205. 1,811 candidates stood for election, a third of them women. In addition to the state parliament, Bavarians will also elect the district assemblies in the seven administrative districts on Sunday.