represented in the 13th Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. A total of 22 parties and lists ran in the election, as did 17 independent candidates. A total of 1,343 candidates stood for election, of which 273 (20.3%) were women. Only the four parliamentary parties as well as The Republicans and Labour and Social Justice ran candidates in all 128 constituencies. Due to the single-vote system, the number of constituencies in which each party stood determined how much of the electorate they were able to reach, and thus how many votes they could gather. Campaign Peer Steinbrück, who had been Minister-President for two and a half years by the time of the election, stood as lead candidate for the SPD. As in 2000, the CDU nominated state chairman Jürgen Rüttgers. Environment minister Bärbel Höhn led the Greens for a fourth time, and the FDP put forward Landtag group leader Ingo Wolf. The SPD and Greens aimed to continue their coalition, while the CDU and FDP sought to oust them with a coalition of their own. Polls showed the two blocs neck and neck at the start of the year, but the CDU and FDP established a strong lead by the start of March. Minister-President Peer Steinbrück remained popular and led Rüttgers in terms of personal polling; the SPD relied heavily on his personal image and placed less emphasis on the party brand, which was dragged down by federal issues The SPD also faced a challenge from the left in the form of WASG, a party founded by trade unionists and disgruntled SPD members opposed to the federal government's Agenda 2010. Important topics in the campaign were coal mining subsidies, wind energy, education, and the high unemployment rate. Opinion polling Results Aftermath Immediate coverage of the election was overwhelmed by its impact on federal politics: only half an hour after the polls closed, first SPD chairman Franz Müntefering and then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced the government's intention to seek an early dissolution of the Bundestag. A federal election had originally not been due until September of 2006, but Schröder and Müntefering felt the need for a renewed mandate for the government's agenda in light of a string of defeats on the state level, of which North Rhine-Westphalia was the most significant as it was a longtime stronghold of the SPD. The result also marked the defeat of the last incumbent SPD-Green state government.