ABSTRACT
The federal election held on 22 September 2002 was unique in the history of the FRG in several respects. The 2002 elections were also unique in staging a live television debate between the chancellor candidates of the two main parties, Schroder and Stoiber. With a voting system based on proportional representation, some one would expect two parties with exactly the same percentage of the second vote to be allocated the same number of parliamentary mandates. Reducing stubbornly high unemployment was of course one of the most important issues, if not the major topic at the start of the 2002 campaign. Polls had been conducted at which up to 80 per cent of those questioned had named unemployment as the most important campaign issue. In terms of voter realignment, the 2002 election confirmed some, though not all, of the general trends in voting patterns that are firmly entrenched in German electoral behaviour.
