1979 West German presidential election

West German presidential election, 1979

Nominee Karl Carstens Annemarie Renger Party CDU SPD Electoral vote 528 431

President before election Walter Scheel FDP Elected President Karl Carstens CDU

An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 23 May 1979. Deeming his reelection to be unlikely, incumbent Walter Scheel elected not to seek a second term. The two candidates to replace him were the President of the Bundestag Karl Carstens, nominated by the Christian Democratic Union and Carstens' immediate predecessor Annemarie Renger, nominated by the Social Democratic Party. Carstens won the election on the first ballot.

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	531		Bundestag	518
SPD	438		Baden-Württemberg	75
FDP	66		Bavaria	92
Independents	1		Berlin	16
Total	1036		Bremen	6
			Hamburg	14
			Hesse	46
			Lower Saxony	63
			North Rhine-Westphalia	143
			Rhineland-Palatinate	31
			Saarland	9
			Schleswig-Holstein	23
			Total	1036

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

Results

Candidate	Parties	Votes	%
Karl Carstens	CDU/CSU	528	51.0
Annemarie Renger	SPD	431	41.6
Abstentions		72	6.9
Invalid votes		1	0.1
Not present		4	0.4
Total		1,036	100
Source Bundestag