despite suffering the biggest net loss of votes, the christian democratic union maintained its leading position. the greens and the social democrats finished with equal numbers of seats, although the greens beat the social democrats by 66 votes. afd, which ran for the first time for a state legislature in hesse in 2013 and failed to win any seats, was the only new addition to the hessian landtag, and, by entering it, became present in all german state legislatures, a trait shared only by spd and cdu/csu, though the latter are technically two separate parties.