1950 Hessian state election
German state election / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 1950 Hessian state election was held on 19 November 1950 to elect the 2nd Landtag of Hesse. The outgoing government was a grand coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led by Minister-President Christian Stock, who retired at the election. He was succeeded as SPD lead candidate by Georg-August Zinn.
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All 80 seats in the Landtag of Hesse 41 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Turnout | 1,936,762 (64.9% 8.3pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Results for the single-member constituencies. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The SPD won a clear majority of seats thanks to quirks of the electoral system, which had been modified since 1946 to a form of mixed-member proportional representation. The Hessian CDU, who took a left-of-centre course in government with the SPD, were heavily defeated and pushed to third place with 19%. An alliance of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and All-German Bloc/League of Expellees (GB/HBE) emerged as the second-largest party with 32%, but were unable to prevent the SPD from achieving its majority. Further, the Communist Party (KPD) slipped just below the 5% electoral threshold and lost their seats. After the election, Minister-President Stock retired and was succeeded by justice minister Georg-August Zinn, who led an SPD majority government.