West German presidential election, 1964

West German presidential election, 1964

1 July 1964

Nominee Heinrich Lübke Ewald Bucher (facing the camera) Party CDU FDP Electoral vote 710 123

President before election Heinrich Lübke CDU Elected President Heinrich Lübke CDU

An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 1 July 1964. President Heinrich Lübke was renominated by the Christian Democratic Union. The Free Democratic Party nominated justice minister Ewald Bucher. The Social Democratic Party was divided. The official party line was that they supported President Lübke's re-election. Some have speculated this was a first move towards the grand-coalition that brought Kurt Kiesinger to power two years later. However, the high number of abstentions seems to indicate that not all members of the SPD caucus agreed with this move, as does the fact that Ewald Bucher received at least 19 votes from outside his own party.

Composition of the Federal Convention

The President is elected by the Federal Convention consisting of all the members of the Bundestag and an equal number of delegates representing the states. These are divided proportionally by population to each state, and each state's delegation is divided among the political parties represented in its parliament so as to reflect the partisan proportions in the parliament.

By Party			By State
Party	Members		State	Members
CDU/CSU	485		Bundestag	521
SPD	445		Baden-Württemberg	73
FDP	104		Bavaria	89
BP	3		Berlin	20
GB/BHE	2		Bremen	6
SVP	1		Hamburg	17
DPS	1		Hesse	45
Independents	1		Lower Saxony	61
Total	1042		North Rhine-Westphalia	147
			Rhineland-Palatinate	32
			Saarland	10
			Schleswig-Holstein	21
			Total	1042

Source: Eine Dokumentation aus Anlass der Wahl des Bundespräsidenten am 18. März 2012

Results

Candidate	Parties	Votes	%
Heinrich Lübke	CDU/CSU	710	68.1
Ewald Bucher	FDP	123	11.8
Abstentions		187	17.9
Invalid votes		4	0.4
Not present		18	1.7
Total		1,042	100
Source: Bundestag

References