The Landtag of Bavaria, officially known in English as the Bavarian State Parliament,[1] is the unicameral legislature of the German state of Bavaria. The parliament meets in the Maximilianeum in Munich.
Elections to the Landtag are held every five years[2] and have to be conducted on a Sunday or public holiday.[3] The following elections have to be held no earlier than 59 months and no later than 62 months after the previous one,[4] unless the Landtag is dissolved. The most recent elections to the Bavarian Landtag were held on 8 October 2023.
Presentation medal of the Bayerische Ständeversammlung 1819 to King Maximilian I Joseph, on the first anniversary of the constitution of 1818, obverse.
The Landtag of Bavaria was founded in 1818, in the Kingdom of Bavaria. The first assembly was held on 4 February 1819. Originally it was called the Ständeversammlung and was divided into an upper house, the Kammer der Reichsräte (House of Councillors), and a lower house, the Kammer der Abgeordneten [de] (House of Representatives). With the act to reform the election of the representatives in 1848 the Ständeversammlung was de facto renamed the Landtag (state diet). The name Landtag was used occasionally before this act.
In the Weimar Republic, from 1919 on, under the Bamberg Constitution [de], the upper house of the Landtag was abolished and its lower house became a unicameral democratic elected assembly. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the Landtag underwent Gleichschaltung like all German state parliaments. It was dissolved on 30 January 1934 as a result of the "Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich".[5]
After the Second World War, the new Constitution of Bavaria was enacted and the first new Landtag elections took place on 1 December 1946. Between 1946 and 1999 there was again an upper house, the Senate of Bavaria. The CSU has dominated the Bavarian Landtag for nearly the entire post-war period.
The CSU's 2003 election victory was the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany that any party had won a two-thirds majority of seats in an assembly at any level.[6] Five years later in 2008, the CSU saw a stunning reversal of fortunes, and failed to win a majority of seats in Bavaria for the first time in 46 years. In the aftermath of this result, the SPD floated the idea that the four other parties should all unite to form a government excluding the CSU, as it had "lost its mandate to lead": however, the FDP were not interested, and opted to form a coalition with the CSU.
Composition
Constituencies and electoral districts for the 2018 and 2023 Bavarian state elections
As of the 2018 and 2023 elections, the state is divided into 91 electoral districts, which each elect one representative in the same manner as under first-past-the-post. To achieve a proportional result, another 89 seats are elected on open party lists in the 7 administrative regions of the state, which the Constitution of Bavaria define as constituencies. Seats are assigned to each constituency based on population. The 89 seats are allocated to the parties such that, also taking into account the 91 districts seats, each party is represented in proportion to its share of the vote in the constituencies. On election day, people vote separately for a candidate in their electoral districts (called the "first vote") and for a candidate in their constituency (called the "second vote").[7]
As of the 2018 and 2023 elections, seats are assigned to the constituency as follows:
