1990 East German general election

18 March 1990

The listing carries only the year. The vote took place on 18 March 1990, when East German voters freely and secretly elected all 400 members of the tenth Volkskammer — the GDR’s first and only free parliamentary election.

About 12.4 million people were eligible and 93.4 percent voted, choosing among 19 parties and five electoral alliances across 15 constituencies under proportional representation with no electoral threshold.

The polls were wrong

The CDU-led Alliance for Germany, campaigning for rapid reunification, the Deutsche Mark and a social-market economy, took about 48 percent and 192 of the 400 seats — 163 CDU, 25 German Social Union, four Democratic Awakening.

The SPD, which had led many pre-election polls, finished second with 88 seats; the SED-successor PDS took 66. Alliance 90, drawn from the opposition movement that had driven the revolution, won 12.

What the vote was, and was not

The pre-1990 GDR is often called a single-party system. It was an SED dictatorship with a sham multiparty parliament: four subordinated bloc parties and SED-controlled mass organizations also held seats.

Pluralism was established before the election, not legalized by the new parliament afterward — competing parties had to exist for 18 March to happen at all.

The result gave a majority for fast monetary and political union without itself reunifying Germany. The new Volkskammer convened on 5 April and elected Lothar de Maizière on 12 April.