[4] Prior to this, Federal Minister of Labour Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) had been considered the front-runner for the nomination of the government parties.

[5][6] Because the Constitution of Germany forbids the president to hold other offices, Christian Wulff resigned from his seat in the Landtag of Lower Saxony and left the supervisory board of Volkswagen.

On 3 June 2010, the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the SSW, nominated independent Joachim Gauck, an anti-communist civil rights activist from East Germany and the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, as their presidential candidate.

[14] While the Left's co-chairman, Klaus Ernst, initially indicated that his party might support Gauck in a possible second or third ballot,[15] Gregor Gysi, chairman of the Left's parliamentary group in the Bundestag and Oskar Lafontaine, former co-chairman of the party, voiced their opposition to voting for Gauck, criticizing his support of the War in Afghanistan and the Hartz welfare reforms.

Kipping lauded Gauck's role in investigating Stasi injustice but criticized "equating Hitler-fascism and the GDR", which she perceives as a "trivialisation of fascism".

[20] Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD chairman, described Lafontaine's reaction as "bizarre and embarrassing", stating that he was "shocked" the party would declare Joachim Gauck their main enemy due to his investigation of communist injustice.

[35] Gysi, on the other hand, criticized the SPD of not cooperating with his party, which is considered extreme by federal authorities, and again pointed out differences in political positions between Gauck and the Left.