1959 West German presidential election
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An indirect presidential election (officially the 3rd Federal Convention) was held in
Christian Democratic Union instead nominated Heinrich Lübke. The Social Democrats nominated Carlo Schmid who had been the party's caucus chair at the Parliamentary Council. The Free Democratic Party nominated the chair of its Bundestag caucus, Max Becker. Like the first contested presidential election ten years prior, it took two rounds to determine a winner. Heinrich Lübke
fell two votes short of the absolute majority in the first round, winning the election with 526 votes in the second.
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 |
CSU
|
517 | Bundestag | 519 |
| SPD | 386 | Baden-Württemberg | 70 |
| FDP | 82 | Bavaria | 88 |
| DP | 24 | Berlin | 21 |
| GB/BHE | 20 | Bremen | 6 |
| BP | 6 | Hamburg | 17 |
| DPS | 3 | Hesse | 44 |
| Total | 1038 | Lower Saxony | 62 |
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 147 | ||
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 32 | ||
| Saarland | 10 | ||
| Schleswig-Holstein | 22 | ||
| Total | 1038 | ||
Source: Eine Dokumentation aus Anlass der Wahl des Bundespräsidenten am 18. März 2012
Results
| Candidate | Parties | First round | Second round | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | ||||
| Heinrich Lübke | CSU, DP |
517 | 49.8 | 536 | 50.7 | ||
| Carlo Schmid | SPD | 385 | 37.1 | 386 | 37.2 | ||
| Max Becker | FDP | 104 | 10.0 | 99 | 9.5 | ||
| Abstentions | 25 | 2.4 | 22 | 2.1 | |||
| Invalid votes | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Not present | 7 | 0.7 | 5 | 0.5 | |||
| Total | 1,031 | 99.3 | 1,033 | 99.5 | |||
| Source: Bundestag | |||||||
