German Election Nitty-Gritty | Election 2005
Nearly one-third of Germany's voters -- 19.7 million -- are 60 years old or more. Young voters, below 21, who have the opportunity to cast ballots in their first general election, make up 4.2 percent of the total. Germans are eligible to vote from age 18, and 2.6 million of them are registered.All told, 3,648 candidates are running for seats in Germany's house of parliament, the Bundestag, including 936 women. Their average age is 46. Twenty-five parties are vying for votes.During the general election in 2002, 79.1 percent of the country's voters went to the polls, putting Germany in the mid-range of Western countries. Until the late 1980s, voter participation was consistently above 84 percent. In 1972, the electorate positively flooded the polls in the biggest turnout ever, when 91.1 percent of voters cast ballots in a general election that had become a poll about Chancellor Willy Brandt's controversial Ostpolitik focussed on improving relations with Eastern Bloc countries and the German Democratic Republic. The lowest turnout was recorded for the first election in reunited Germany, in 1990, when only 77.8 percent of voters cast ballots.
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