Free Voters

Free Voters (, FW) is a centre-right political party in Germany. The party originates as an umbrella organisation of several Free Voters Associations, associations of people which participate in an election without having the status of a registered party. These associations are usually locally-organised groups of voters in the form of a registered association (eV). In most cases, Free Voters campaign only at local government level, standing for city councils and for mayoralties. Free Voters tend to achieve their most successful electoral results in rural areas of southern Germany, appealing most to conservative voters who prefer local decisions to party politics. Free Voter groups are active in all of the states of Germany. History In the 2008 Bavaria state election, the FW association obtained 10.2% of the vote and gained their first 20 seats in the Landtag of Bavaria. FW may have been helped by the presence in its list of Gabriele Pauli, a former member of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU). Others suggested that it was the other way round. Unlike in the other German states, the Free Voters of Bavaria have also contested state elections since 1998. In the state election of 2013 FW repeated its success, gaining 19 seats. In the 2014 European parliament elections in Germany, the Free Voters list received 1.46% of the national vote and returned a single MEP, Ulrike Müller, who sits with the ALDE Group. The federal Free Voters association joined the European Democratic Party in October 2015. In June 2017 Arne Gericke, who sits with European Parliament's European Conservatives and Reformists group and was elected in 2014 on the Family Party of Germany list, joined the federal association. Gericke left it 15 months afterward for Alliance C – Christians for Germany.