Politics of Lower Saxony

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The Politics of Lower Saxony takes place within a framework of a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic, where the Federal Government of Germany exercises sovereign rights with certain powers reserved to the states of Germany including Lower Saxony. Since 1948 politics in the state has been dominated by the rightist Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the leftist Social Democratic Party. Lower Saxony was one of the origins of the German environmentalist movement in reaction to the state government's support for underground nuclear waste disposal. This led to the formation of the German Green Party in 1980.

Political party:   SPD   DP   CDU

Portrait		Name (Born–Died)	Term of office			Political party	Election
			Took office	Left office	Days
State of Lower Saxony (1946–present)
British occupation zone of Germany (1946–1949)
State of the Federal Republic of Germany (as of 23 May 1949)
1		Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf (1893–1961)	9 December 1946	26 May 1955	3090	Social Democratic Party	1947 1951
2		Heinrich Hellwege (1908–1991)	26 May 1955	12 May 1959	1447	German Party	1955
3 (1)		Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf (1893–1961)	12 May 1959	21 December 1961 (died in office)	954	Social Democratic Party	1959
4		Georg Diederichs (1900–1983)	29 December 1961	8 July 1970	3113	Social Democratic Party	1963 1967
5		Alfred Kubel (1909–1999)	8 July 1970	6 February 1976 (resigned)	2039	Social Democratic Party	1970 1974
6		Ernst Albrecht (1930–2014)	6 February 1976	21 June 1990	5249	Christian Democratic Union	1974 1978 1982 1986
7		Gerhard Schröder (born 1944)	21 June 1990	27 October 1998 (resigned to become Chancellor)	3050	Social Democratic Party	1990 1994 1998
8		Gerhard Glogowski (born 1943)	28 October 1998	15 October 1999 (resigned)	352	Social Democratic Party	1998
9		Sigmar Gabriel (born 1959)	15 October 1999	4 March 2003	1236	Social Democratic Party	1998
10		Christian Wulff (born 1959)	4 March 2003	30 June 2010 (resigned to become President)	2675	Christian Democratic Union	2003 2008
11		David McAllister (born 1971)	1 July 2010	19 February 2013	964	Christian Democratic Union	2008
12		Stephan Weil (born 1958)	19 February 2013	Incumbent	4280	Social Democratic Party	2013 2017 2022

A darkened box under a party in any given year denotes that the party had either not yet been founded, or the party had become defunct, by the date of that election.

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  1st Landtag, following 1947 election
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  2nd Landtag, following 1951 election
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  3rd Landtag, following 1955 election
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  4th Landtag, following 1959 election
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  5th Landtag, following 1963 election
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  6th Landtag, following 1967 election
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  7th Landtag, following 1970 election
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  8th Landtag, following 1974 election
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  9th Landtag, following 1978 election
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  10th Landtag, following 1982 election
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  11th Landtag, following 1986 election
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  12th Landtag, following 1990 election
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  13th Landtag, following 1994 election
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  14th Landtag, following 1998 election
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  15th Landtag, following 2003 election
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  16th Landtag, following 2008 election
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  17th Landtag, following 2013 election
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  18th Landtag, following 2017 election
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  19th Landtag, following 2022 election

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  1990 Lower Saxony state election, Red is SPD, Black is CDU
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  1994 Lower Saxony state election, Red is SPD, Black is CDU
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  1998 Lower Saxony state election, Red is SPD, Black is CDU
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  2003 Lower Saxony state election, Red is SPD, Black is CDU
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  2008 Lower Saxony state election, Red is SPD, Black is CDU
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  2013 Lower Saxony state election, Red is SPD, Black is CDU
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  2017 Lower Saxony state election, Red is SPD, Black is CDU
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  2022 Lower Saxony state election, Red is SPD, Black is CDU