West German federal election, 1961

• CDU / CSU: 251
• SPD: 203
• FDP: 67

The 1961 Bundestag elections took place on 17 September 1961. In the election for the 4th German Bundestag, the CDU and CSU lost its absolute majority, however, were in a coalition with the FDP continues to reign.

Background

The election campaign was under the impression the building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961. For the CDU / CSU came for the fourth time Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the addition to his long tenure was charged ( since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949 ), on the construction of the wall to to have slow responding and waited too long to go after the Wall in Berlin. So he was only on August 22, 1961 for the first time on site, for example, while U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was born in Berlin on 19 August 1961. However, that meant in the Allensbach surveys only a short-term slump in Adenauer's popularity.

For the first time joined the SPD Berlin's governing mayor Willy Brandt as chancellor candidate. It was the first choice for the SPD after the adoption of the Godesberg Programme of 1959, in which she finally said goodbye to the theory of historical materialism, Marxism and planned economic ideas.

In the election, the CDU / CSU lost its gained in the general election in 1957 an absolute majority, while the SPD made ​​significant gains, as well as the FDP, which even you won at the federal level under the slogan With the CDU, but without Adenauer to 2009 best result. The leavened in the all-German party German Party ( DP) lost their last mandate.

Official final result

¹ in brackets: number of representatives elected on the same day by the Berlin Chamber of Deputies, non-voting members of the Bundestag in Berlin ² seventeen deputies of the German Party ( DP)

Results in the provinces

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Thus, only three groups were represented in the Bundestag for the first time. The previous opposition FDP entered into a coalition with the CDU / CSU. Contrary to the previous maxim they voted on November 7, 1961 Chancellor Adenauer as chancellor, but was able to prevail with the requirement that this should still assign the same term of the office to a successor. Nevertheless, hurried her long time the call for to be " fallen ".

The SPD, however, it is to open up new voters, for which, among other things, the new party program and the new candidate had succeeded reasons. The SPD was on his way to the People's Party.