The SPD-Green coalition won an unexpectedly large victory, taking 345 seats and earning a strong majority in the Bundestag—the first centre-left absolute majority in post-World War II Germany. The SPD won 40.9 percent of the vote, due to an increase of 4.5 percent from 1994. The CDU/CSU-FDP coalition had gone into the election with a solid majority and 341 seats, but was cut down to 288 seats. The CDU/CSU lost 6.2% of its 1994 vote, and lost 109 electoral districts to the SPD. Germany's mixed-member proportional system, in which a slate of statewide delegates are elected alongside the electorate delegates, softened the blow somewhat, so the CDU/CSU only suffered a net loss of 49 seats. It was still the CDU/CSU's worst defeat ever. By contrast, their junior coalition partner, the FDP, netted a loss of just 4 seats. The SPD swept all single-member constituency seats in the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saarland, Bremen, Hamburg and (for the first and last time) Schleswig-Holstein. Kohl lost his own constituency of Ludwigshafen, though he was still re-elected to the Bundestag through the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU party list, and he had not won the seat in the 1983 and 1987 elections. Future Chancellor Angela Merkel only narrowly won her constituency of Stralsund – Rügen – Grimmen with only 37.3 percent of the vote; the only time she got less than 40 percent of the vote. A new government was formed by a coalition between the SPD and the Greens, with the SPD's Gerhard Schröder as chancellor and Greens leader Joschka Fischer as vice-chancellor and foreign minister. It was the first red-green coalition government at the federal level in Germany, as well as the first purely centre-left government in post-World War II Germany. Kohl stepped down as chairman of the CDU, as did CSU chairman Theodor Waigel. Legacy The 1998 German election was historic in many ways. It resulted in a centre-right government being succeeded by a left-wing one—the first in postwar Germany (the SPD's previous term in government had been at the helm of a centre-left coalition). In addition, it brought to an end the sixteen-year rule of Kohl – the second-longest of any German chancellor, and the longest tenure for a democratically elected head of government in German history. It has been compared to the defeat of Winston Churchill in 1945 – both were seen as conservative wartime leaders, and in both cases both