The opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) under Jürgen Rüttgers won a commanding victory with 45% of votes and came just short of a majority in the Landtag.

The result had important ramifications outside North Rhine-Westphalia: such a crushing defeat for the SPD in a stronghold state was viewed as an indication of unpopularity of the federal government led by Gerhard Schröder.

Since the previous election in 2000, an electoral reform had been passed which reduced the number of single-member constituencies by 23 and the overall size of the Landtag by 20 members.

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.

Environment minister Bärbel Höhn led the Greens for a fourth time, and the FDP put forward Landtag group leader Ingo Wolf.

Important topics in the campaign were coal mining subsidies, wind energy, education, and the high unemployment rate.

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.

[1] This led to a knock-on effect as Schröder quickly brought and deliberately lost a motion of confidence in the Bundestag and subsequently dissolved it.