The 2018 Hessian state election was held on 28 October 2018 to elect the members of the Landtag of Hesse.^[1] The outgoing government was a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and The Greens led by Minister-President Volker Bouffier.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (March 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Landtagswahl in Hessen 2018]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|de|Landtagswahl in Hessen 2018}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Turnout, First party ...

2018 Hesse state election

← 2013 28 October 2018 2023 →
All 137 seats of the Landtag of Hesse, including 27 overhang and leveling seats 69 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	2,881,261 (67.3%) 5.9%
First party Second party Third party   Leader Volker Bouffier Tarek Al-Wazir Priska Hinz Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel Party CDU Greens SPD Last election 47 seats, 38.3% 14 seats, 11.1% 37 seats, 30.7% Seats won 40 29 29 Seat change 7 15 8 Popular vote 776,910 570,512 570,446 Percentage 27.0% 19.8% 19.8% Swing 11.3% 8.7% 10.9%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Rainer Rahn René Rock Janine Wissler Jan Schalauske Party AfD FDP Left Last election 0 seats, 4.1% 6 seats, 5.0% 6 seats, 5.2% Seats won 19 11 9 Seat change 19 5 3 Popular vote 378,692 215,946 181,263 Percentage 13.1% 7.5% 6.3% Swing 9.0% 2.5% 1.1%
Map of the election, showing the winner of each single-member district and the distribution of list seats.
Government before election Second Bouffier cabinet CDU–Green Government after election Third Bouffier cabinet CDU–Green

Close

The election was held two weeks after the 2018 Bavarian state election, which saw the CSU and Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffer major losses, with third parties making major gains. The result in Hesse was largely similar, with the CDU and SPD losing more than 20 percentage points between them, while the Greens and Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained approximately 9 points each. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) and The Left also made gains. Compared to the 2013 election turnout fell by 5.9 points to 67.3%.^[2]

Despite suffering the worst losses of any party, the CDU remained the largest party by a comfortable margin. The Greens and SPD each won 29 seats and 19.8% of the vote; the Greens moved into second place by an extremely narrow margin of just 66 votes. The AfD, which failed to win seats in 2013, won 13.1% and 19 seats. By entering the Landtag in Hesse, it became the only third party present in all sixteen state parliaments.

The election was influenced by the poor condition of the federal government in the aftermath of the "asylum quarrel" in June/July and the crisis around Hans-Georg Maaßen in September.^[3][4] One day after the election, federal Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that she would not seek re-election as CDU leader at the party convention in early December, nor seek her party's nomination as Chancellor candidate for the next federal election.^[5]

The incumbent CDU–Green government was returned with a slim majority of one seat, and was subsequently renewed.

The incumbent Hesse government coalition consisted of CDU and the Greens.

The regional election for Hesse, along with the Bavarian state election held just two weeks before, was widely seen as a test for the ruling CDU/CSU and SPD coalition of Angela Merkel's fourth federal cabinet.^[6]

The table below lists parties represented in the previous Landtag of Hesse.

Despite heavy losses inflicted on the party, the CDU returned to government after negotiating a coalition agreement with the Greens, the second consecutive such arrangement between the two parties. The two parties formed the narrowest possible majority in the Landtag, occupying 69 seats. As part of the agreement, the Greens increased their representation in the Cabinet, holding four of the eleven portfolios.^[7] The returned coalition only became possible after a recount of votes took place several weeks after the election, due to computer glitches which affected some election night results. Following the recount, the state election commissioner announced that compared to the provisional figures, there were no significant shifts in the percentages, and the distribution of seats in the state parliament had not changed.^[8]