2012 North Rhine-Westphalia state election

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (March 2012) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Landtagswahl in Nordrhein-Westfalen 2012]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Landtagswahl in Nordrhein-Westfalen 2012}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

2012 North Rhine-Westphalia state election

← 2010 13 May 2012 2017 →
All 237 seats in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, including 56 overhang and leveling seats 119 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	7,901,268 (59.6% 0.3pp)
First party Second party Third party   Candidate Hannelore Kraft Norbert Röttgen Sylvia Löhrmann Party SPD CDU Greens Last election 67 seats, 34.5% 67 seats, 34.6% 23 seats, 12.1% Seats won 99 67 29 Seat change 32 0 6 Popular vote 3,049,983 2,050,321 884,298 Percentage 39.1% 26.3% 11.3% Swing 4.6pp 8.3pp 0.8pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Candidate Christian Lindner Joachim Paul Katharina Schwabedissen Party FDP Pirates Left Last election 13 seats, 6.7% 0 seats, 1.6% 11 seats, 5.6% Seats won 22 20 0 Seat change 9 20 11 Popular vote 670,082 609,176 194,428 Percentage 8.6% 7.8% 2.5% Swing 1.9pp 6.2pp 3.1pp
Results for the single-member constituencies.
Government before election First Kraft cabinet SPD–Green Government after election Second Kraft cabinet SPD–Green

The 2012 North Rhine-Westphalia state election was held on 13 May 2012 to elect the members of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. The incumbent minority government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Greens led by Minister-President Hannelore Kraft was returned with a majority and continued in office. The seat count drastically increased from 181 in the previous election to 237.