All data, all facts
The state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia
05/16/2022, 12:01 p.m
Big election day in the west: Shortly after the CDU triumph in Schleswig-Holstein, the next big state election is in the limelight in North Rhine-Westphalia. Laschet’s successor Hendrik Wüst unexpectedly clearly wins with the CDU. The SPD crashes – but wants to govern. All infographics for the NRW election at a glance.
Exactly one week after the CDU triumph in Schleswig-Holstein on May 8, the next political course was set in North Rhine-Westphalia at state level. Around 13.2 million voters were called to vote in what is by far the most populous federal state. Beforehand, everything looked like a very exciting election evening with a head-to-head race: between the CDU of short-term Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst, who only took over the office from Armin Laschet at the end of October 2021, and the SPD with their top candidate Thomas Kutschaty.
But it was already clear after the first forecasts at 6 p.m.: The CDU and Wüst will emerge from the election as by far the strongest forces – while the SPD will have its worst NRW result ever and will fall below the 30 percent mark for the first time. But despite the personal electoral success, Wüst cannot continue to govern as before. His black and yellow coalition with the FDP will no longer have a majority in view of the massive losses suffered by the Liberals.
According to the provisional official final result, the CDU gained 2.7 percentage points compared to 2017. The Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia even made double-digit gains, improving to 18.2 percent and thus achieving one of their best state election results ever. The SPD, on the other hand, lost more than 4 percentage points. The losses for the FDP, which initially even had to worry about being able to re-enter the state parliament, are even more severe. However, the first projections by ARD and ZDF showed that it would be enough for the Liberals. The same applies to the AfD.
It will definitely no longer be enough for a continuation of the black-yellow coalition in the Düsseldorf state parliament. Red-Green did not win enough seats for a new edition of the coalition of SPD and Greens, which was voted out in 2017. There are majorities only in other constellations, such as a possible black-green alliance or a traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP.
Despite the historically poor election results for the SPD, General Secretary Kevin Kühnert contradicted the assessment “that this is a clear defeat” for his party. The SPD will try to form a government alliance.
While the Greens were celebrating their best result ever in North Rhine-Westphalia and their third-best result in a state outside of Baden-Württemberg, the FDP collapsed. Party leader Christian Lindner, who comes from North Rhine-Westphalia and led the Liberals to their best NRW result so far in 2017, admitted a “disastrous defeat”. To display the previous NRW election results for the CDU and the Greens, please switch using the dropdown menu.