Editing Free Democratic Party (Germany) (section)

=== 2002 and 2005 federal elections ===
Following their electoral defeat, the party developed a strategy of equidistance to the CDU and SPD championed by [[North Rhine-Westphalia|North Rhine-Westfalia]] state party leader [[Jürgen Möllemann]] who led the party to a good result in the [[2000 North Rhine-Westphalia state election|2000 state elections]]. At their 2001 party conference in Düsseldorf, outgoing party leader [[Wolfgang Gerhardt]] was replaced by a 39 year old [[Guido Westerwelle]] who became the youngest FDP leader in history. The party conference also adopted a strategy developed by Möllemann which became known as ‘Project 18’. It aimed at winning new groups of voters through new forms of communication and presentation and at profiling the party as an independent force autonomous from SPD and CDU. The name referred to the electoral goal of tripling the party's share of the vote from 6% to 18%. While Westerwelle and Möllemann generated a lot of media attention, the party was once again embroiled in controversy on Westerwelle's perceived lack of seriousness in his election campaign ("Spaßwahlkampf") and on Möllemann's alleged right-wing populism. Many critics interpreted the use of the [[18 (number)|number 18]] as a hidden right-wing extremist symbol (a code for the letters A and H, meaning Adolf Hitler) and an attempt to attract voters on the far right. In addition, Möllemann launched a leaflet campaign with harsh criticism of the [[Israel]]<nowiki/>i government under [[Ariel Sharon]] and the German-Jewish journalist [[Michel Friedman]], which critics interpreted as anti-Semitism. Amid controversy over a possible right-wing populist orientation associated with this, the FDP ultimately achieved 7.4% instead of the targeted 18 per cent in the [[2002 German federal election]].[[File:Freie Demokratische Partei, Deutschland (logo - 2005).svg|thumb|100px|Former logo (2001–2014)]]
In the [[2005 German federal election|2005 general election]] the party won 9.8 percent of the vote and 61 federal deputies, an unpredicted improvement from prior opinion polls. It is believed that this was partly due to [[tactical voting]] by CDU and [[Christian Social Union of Bavaria]] (CSU) alliance supporters who hoped for stronger market-oriented economic reforms than the CDU/CSU alliance called for. However, because the CDU did worse than predicted, the FDP and the CDU/CSU alliance were unable to form a coalition government. At other times, for example after the 2002 federal election, a coalition between the FDP and CDU/CSU was impossible primarily because of the weak results of the FDP.

The CDU/CSU parties had achieved the third-worst performance in German postwar history with only 35.2 percent of the votes. Therefore, the FDP was unable to form a coalition with its preferred partners, the CDU/CSU parties. As a result, the party was considered as a potential member of two other [[political coalition]]s, following the election. One possibility was a partnership between the FDP, the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]] (SPD) and the [[Alliance 90/The Greens]], known as a "[[traffic light coalition]]", named after the colors of the three parties. This coalition was ruled out, because the FDP considered the Social Democrats and the Greens insufficiently committed to market-oriented [[economic reform]]. The other possibility was a CDU-FDP-Green coalition, known as a "[[Jamaica coalition (politics)|Jamaica coalition]]" because of the colours of the three parties. This coalition wasn't concluded either, since the Greens ruled out participation in any coalition with the CDU/CSU. Instead, the CDU formed a [[Grand coalition]] with the SPD, and the FDP entered the [[Opposition (parliamentary)|opposition]]. FDP leader [[Guido Westerwelle]] became the unofficial leader of the opposition by virtue of the FDP's position as the largest opposition party in the Bundestag.

In the [[2009 European Parliament election in Germany|2009 European election]], the FDP received 11% of the national vote (2,888,084 votes in total) and returned 12 [[Member of the European Parliament|MEP]]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/de/europawahlen/EU_BUND_09/ergebnisse/bundesergebnisse//|title=Übersicht|work=bundeswahlleiter.de|access-date=5 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923231614/http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/de/europawahlen/EU_BUND_09/ergebnisse/bundesergebnisse/|archive-date=23 September 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref>