The Landtag of Bavaria, officially known in English as the Bavarian State Parliament, is the unicameral legislature of the state of Bavaria in Germany. The parliament meets in the Maximilianeum in Munich. Elections to the Landtag are held every five years and have to be conducted on a Sunday or public holiday. The following elections have to be held no earlier than 59 months and no later than 62 months after the previous one, unless the Landtag is dissolved. The most recent elections to the Bavarian Landtag were held on 14 October 2018.
History
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, and a lower house, the Kammer der Abgeordneten. In 1834 the Ständeversammlung was renamed the Landtag. In the Weimar Republic, from 1919 on, under the Bamberg Constitution, the upper house of the Landtag was abolished and its lower house became a unicameral democratic elected assembly. In 1933, in Nazi Germany, the Landtag suffered Gleichschaltung like all German state parliaments. It was dissolved on 30 January 1934. 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.
Results of the 2018 election
Summary of the 14 October 2018 election results for the Landtag of Bavaria ! colspan="2" | Party ! Ideology ! Votes ! colspan="2" | Votes % ! colspan="2" | Seats ! Seats % ! colspan=9| ! align="right" colspan=2| Total ! align="right" | ! align="right" | 11,812,965 ! align="right" | 100.0% ! align="right" | ! align="right" | 205 ! align="right" | +25 ! align="right" |
Composition of the Landtag
The Bavarian Landtag is elected through personalized proportional representation with 90 Constituencies, but unlike the Bundestag, the seven Administrative Districts are serving as "Electoral Regions" with a fixed number of seats allocated, flexible regional lists are used and both votes count equally regarding the proportional results so that even the "lost" Constituency votes count. Also, Constituency candidates are usually also List candidates of their Party and thus able to gain enough votes to have a chance of entering the Landtag through their list even though they could not win their Constituency. The state government is formed by the CSU. Markus Söder has been Minister-President of Bavaria since March 2018, when he succeeded Horst Seehofer. 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. 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.
