1935 Weranian federal election

1935 Weranian federal election

17 April 1935
All 584 seats to the House of Deputies 292 seats are needed for a majority in the Volkstag
Turnout	16,470,368 (83.71%) 0.68%
First party Second party Third party   Leader Aurimas Kreickamas Otto Röttgen Gustav Kroetz Party OSAI KSP SPO Leader since 14th May 1930 3rd March 1935 24th May 1920 Leader's seat Ruttland Cislania Cislania Last election 164 seats, 25.13% 142 seats, 21.76% 58 seats, 8.91% Seats won 183 167 67 Seat change 19 25 9 Popular vote 5,048,372 4,596,028 1,859,570 Percentage 30.65% 27.90% 11.29% Swing 5.52% 6.14% 2.38%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Walther von Pittermann Lothar Kuehnelt Karl Theophil von Pölten Party NLP Radicals OVP Leader since 17th February 1930 4th December 1917 15th August 1932 Leader's seat Westbrücken Bonnlitz-Ostbrücken Prizen Last election 66 seats, 10.10% 54 seats, 8.38% New party Seats won 60 60 47 Seat change 6 6 46 Popular vote 1,675,936 1,658,302 1,295,843 Percentage 10.18% 10.07% 7.87% Swing 0.08% 1.69% New party
Premier before election Otto Röttgen KSP Elected Premier Otto Röttgen KSP

The 22^nd federal election was held in the Weranian Confederation for the House of Deputies (the lower house of the Bundestag) on the 17^th April 1935. All 584 members of the House of Deputies were elected under a system of proportional representation with each regierungsbezirke treated as an electoral districts. The elections were the first held in almost a decade as elections had been suspended during the Great War.

The first election held under universal suffrage (with women being granted the vote five months prior to the election) the 1935 election saw the wartime coalition of the Catholic, National Liberals, Social Democrats, Radicals and Conservatives (the landsmann union) under premier Otto Röttgen splinter on the issue of post-war reconstruction. In particular the Radicals opposed the Leopoldist programme of premier Röttgen with the radicals accusing Röttgen and Leopold IV of attempting to create a dictatorship. Nevertheless Röttgen was popular due to his wartime leadership and aimed to secure a firm mandate to implement post-war reforms.

The wartime abolition of Ruttish parties meant that this was the first Weranian election in decades contested purely by federal parties. The abolition of Ruttish parties and the increased influence of the leftists in Euclea benefitted the Weranic Section of the Workers' International. The OSAI supported the notion of entering the government for the first time since its split in 1920 but refused to cooperate with Röttgen.

The election saw a swing to the left with the OSAI retaining its status as the largest party in the House of Deputies increasing its seat and vote share. Nevertheless the KSP saw the largest increase in both seats and vote consolidating its status as the largest non-socialist party. The election saw the left bloc of the OSAI, SPO and Radicals attain a majority but the SPO refused to work with the OSAI due to continued tensions between the two parties. As such Röttgen formed a centrist cabinet predominantly made of KSP and NLP parliamentarians with support from the SPO and the newly formed OVP (a merger of the OKP and the remnants of the NVB). The centrist coalition would continue to hold office during the legislative term under Röttgen's successor Walther von Pittermann.

Electoral process

The election was held using a system of proportional repsentation that had been introduced in 1905. The country had 76 electoral districts based on the regierungsbezirke with no electoral threshold. There were calls to amend the electoral system prior to the election as it had consistently delivered heavily divided legislatures in the period leading up to the Great War that struggled to produce majority governments - however a proposal to introduce a two-round system was rejected by the cabinet.

The government introduced several changes prior to the election however. The seats in the chamber were reduced from 621 to 584, making a majority in the chamber 293 deputies. The government also passed women's suffrage granting women the right to vote for the first time in Weranian history. The measure was the result of rare cooperation between the Catholics and socialists who were seen as the most likely beneficiaries. In addition the voting age was lowered from 25 to 20.

Background

The election occurred in the aftermath of the Great War which changed the political landscape of Werania. Prior to the war Werania had undergone a period of political instability with anti-parliamentarian parties such as the national syndicalist Weranic Syndicalist Union, proto-functionalist National Völkisch Movement and Ruttish nationalist National Resurrection Party undermining Weranian democracy. The presence of these parties alongside the cordon sanitaire around the Weranic Section of the Workers' International meant that governments often became unwieldy coalitions of the so-called "constitutionalist parties" (the Catholics, National Liberals, Social Democrats, Radicals and Conservatives). At the outbreak of war however the government banned the anti-parliamentarian parties (the TPP) whilst forming a national unity government in support of the war effort, the landsmann union. The OSAI was split on the war question although its most prominent personality, Aurimas Kreickamas, supported the war on anti-functionalist grounds.

As the war neared its end the matter of the post-war settlement begun to enter the Weranian political discourse. The socialists had been gaining in popularity both due to increased Kirenian influence and a shift by the socialists towards assimilating patriotism and reverence for the army into their political discourse, notions they had previously belittled. To counter this the monarch Leopold IV and the premier Otto Röttgen formulated a political programme, Leopoldism, that sought to introduce moderate social reform whilst centralising governmental control and limiting parliamentary democracy.

The 1925-1929 legislative term had technically elapsed in 1929 but was extended for another four years twice, in 1929 and 1933. Röttgen and Leopold IV both supported holding an election when the legislative extension expired in 1937 due to the belief that an earlier election would benefit the socialists due to the poor social conditions. The governments post-war reconstruction scheme, the Bader-Fritz Plan, had only begun to take effect and wartime devastation still afflicted the country. Röttgen privately aimed to dissolve the Bundestag following the conclusion of peace treaties with Gaullica and Shangea in order to take advantage of post-war triumphalism.

However the continual postponement of elections sat uneasily with Röttgen's coalition partners, particularly the Radicals and Social Democrats. The radical leader and former premier Lothar Kuehnelt in particular distrusted Röttgen seeing him as a potentially authoritarian figure to close to both the monarchy and the clergy and pushed for an early election in order to reassert the power of the legislature. After Shangea officially surrendered to the Grand Alliance forces in December 1934 Kuehnelt requested to Röttgen to call an early election but the premier demurred. By February 1935 relations between the KSP and Radicals had collapsed leading to Kuehnelt to withdraw the party from the wartime coalition announcing that the Radicals would support the socialists demand to hold an early election.

The withdrawal of the radicals from the coalition caused a crisis for Röttgen. Röttgen had hoped to continue the wartime unity government in order to have societal consensus for post-war reforms and to isolate the socialists from executive power. In response to the Radicals decision the OSAI stated it would be willing to support a centre-left government provided Röttgen had no role in it, threatening the premiers position. Röttgen additionally was not the leader of his party, the KSP, and so with his coalition diminished faced greater uncertainty on his ability to run the country.

As a result shortly following Kuehnelt's withdrawal Röttgen announced that he had obtained consent from the monarch to dissolve the Bundestag in the hope that voters would re-elect the wartime coalition. Röttgen had not consulted the cabinet regarding an election and so his announcement was greeted with surprise. Notably the socialists were caught off guard by the holding of an electing predicting that Röttgen would attempt to cling onto office and so entered the campaign unprepared.

Parties

Affiliation	Party			Ideology	Political position	Spitzenkandidat	1925 result	In government
Left			Weranic Section of the Workers' International	Socialism, Revolutionary socialism	Left-wing	Aurimas Kreickamas	164 / 621	N
Centre-left			Social Democratic Party of Werania	Social democracy, Reformism	Centre-left	Gustav Kroetz	58 / 621	Y
			Radical Party	Radicalism, Anti-clericalism	Centre	Lothar Kuehnelt	54 / 621	N
Centre-right			Catholic Social Party	Political Catholicism, Sotirian Democracy	Centre-right	Otto Röttgen	142 / 621	Y
			National Liberal Party	National Liberalism, Classical liberalism	Centre-right	Walther von Pittermann	66 / 621	Y
Right			Weranian Fatherland Party	National conservatism, Monarchism	Right-wing	Karl Theophil von Pölten	93 / 621	Y

Campaign

The campaign saw the right-wing parties - the KSP, OVP and NLP - rally around premier Röttgen with the far-right being marginalised as a political force as they were discredited due to their association with wartime collaboration. Röttgen and his allies campaigned on a vague platform of social reform and virulent anti-socialism, warning voters of the danger of electing a left-leaning government. Röttgen denounced the OSAI as a sect that represented "narrow class interests" and appealed to the spirit of wartime unity.

The OSAI were split on the prospect of either leading or merely supporting a left-wing government, although its senior leadership supported a coalition with the radicals. In turn the radicals rejected serving under an OSAI led government but supported a partnership between the two parties that would enable the ouster of Röttgen. The SPO did not support a coalition with the OSAI but were uncomfortable with working with Röttgen who they increasingly perceived to be moving in a right-wing direction. SPO chairman Gustav Kroetz called for a renewal of the wartime unity government in order to herald in social reforms.

The campaign was noted for its hyper-partisan nature which made many disillusioned with politics. In particular the banning of many Ruttish parties caused resentment in the province allowing the OSAI to tap into autonomist sentiment to gain traction.

Results

Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/−
	Weranic Section of the Workers' International	5,048,372	30.65	183	+19
	Catholic Social Party	4,596,028	27.90	167	+38
	Social Democratic Party of Werania	1,859,570	11.29	67	+9
	National Liberal Party	1,675,936	10.18	60	−6
	Radical Party	1,658,302	10.07	60	+6
	Weranian Fatherland Party	1,295,843	7.87	47	−46
	Others	115,832	0.70	0	-
Invalid/blank votes		220,485	–	–	–
Total		16,470,368	100	584	±0
Registered voters/turnout		19,675,832	83.71	–	–

Aftermath

Outcome

The election saw the parties of the parliamentary left (the OSAI, SPO and Radicals) gain a majority in the chamber with 52.01% of the vote, commonly seen to be an endorsement of calls for radical social reform in the post war era. This represented the strongest result for the left since the 1918 election and in particular for the OSAI who won a convincing majority of seats in Ruttland, beginning a foothold in the region that would continue for several decades. On the right the KSP largely thanks to Röttgens popularity became the largest non-socialist party seeing the biggest increase of its vote share. Comparatively the traditional parties of the right the NLP and OVP underperformed keeping in line with a trend that had begun in the pre-war period.

Turnout was very high at 83.71% despite fears that demobilised servicemen and women would not vote. Female suffrage had less of an effect then many predicted with women voters showing little divergence from men outside a slight preference for the two largest parties.

Government formation

Although the left had won a majority of the vote and seats the SPO and OSAI opposed entering a coalition with the SPO continuing to govern with Röttgen. Although NLP leader Walther von Pittermann was proposed as a compromise candidate to replace Röttgen as premier to entice the radicals to enter government the monarch Leopold IV refused to appoint a cabinet that excluded Röttgen. Röttgen eventually created a cabinet with the KSP, NLP and SPO heading the majority of cabinet posts with outside support from the OVP. The cabinet was sworn in on the 2 May 1935.

Investiture Otto Röttgen (KSP)
Ballot →		2 May 1935
Required majority →		292 out of 584 Y
	Yes • KSP (167) • SPO (63) • NLP (60) • OVP (47)	337 / 584
	No • OSAI (183) • Radicals (58)	241 / 584
	Abstentions • SPO (4) • Radicals (2)	6 / 584
	Absentees	0 / 584