The German Presidential election will go into a second round of voting. The Conservative candidate and favorite, Christian Wulff received only 600 votes in the first round, 23 short of the absolute majority he needed. Wulff is the candidate of Chancellor Merkel's center-right coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats.His failure to win in the first round is seen by many as a major blow to the Berlin government which has a clear majority in the 1,244-seat voting Assembly, with 644 delegates. Achieving the required absolute majority of 623 votes should have been little more than a formality for Wulff. But in Joachim Gauck, the center-left coalition had fielded a competitor who has managed to win more popular support than Wulff and several renegade coalition members had announced before the ballot they would vote for Gauck.A former civil rights activist who fought against communist oppression in East Germany, Gauck is held in high esteem across party lines. Gauck received 499 votes, a staggering 39 more than expected. The total number of delegates from the opposition Social Democrats and Greens only add up to 460.