For the map enthused!
Rules:
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
be nice
Please note that in Germany you get 2 votes in the federal election. 1st is for a candidate to directly represent your district, 2nd is for a party nation wide. The map only shows the election result for the 2nd vote.
Here's another map to show the party affiliation of winners of the 1st vote:
Colors are the same, except blue. Blue represents CSU, essentially the Bavarian version of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union).
For anyone interested in psephology or electoral systems, the system Germany uses is called Mixed-Member Proportional. It mixes the benefits of FPTP (having a local member who is your local area's most liked candidate) with proportional systems (having the overall Bundestag proportionally representing the will of the people).
The system is pretty neat, but it does come with some issues. See all those dark blue districts in Bavaria? That's way more seats for the CSU than they would be entitled to by the proportional representation.
Previously, these "overhanging mandates" were handled by simply increasing the size is Parliament until proportionality is met ("compensate mandates"). This was fine for decades, where there were always only a couple of those. But as CSU votership dropped (among other things), we were looking at more than 200 additional MEPs (in a parliament of officially 598 seats).
So it got reformed. Parliament now has a fixed 630 seats. The "overhanging mandates" get dropped based on the margin by which they won their electoral district (with some sorting by state mixed in). Most of those districts still got their representative via the party lists, but there actually are 4 districts that are unrepresented now. So it's not a perfect system either.
The way overhangs are handled is one of the key differences between Germany and New Zealand, as I understand it. New Zealand makes no effort to level its parliament, and simply accepts overhangs as a distortion of the pure proportionality. I like the simplicity of it, but for fairness I think Germany's system is probably better. The new system is almost like the inverse of how I suggested party seats should work, which I quite like.
One thing I don't particularly like is the 5% minimum both countries use. It's not unreasonable to have a minimum I think, but it's unfortunate for all the voters whose vote is essentially wasted because they didn't support a popular enough party. It's a less severe version of the problem FPTP has, IMO. Over 13% of voters had their vote completely wasted in last weekend's election. It'd be nice if there was, like, a preferential system, where if your first choice of party doesn't get 5%, it can go to another party of your choice instead. BSW voters, for example, might have chosen to give their vote to Linke, and FDP voters to Union. So the end result would have been:
I've also often been curious how it would work if the local seats were elected not by FPTP but by IRV. Would that have a positive or negative effect on the representation, or not really have much effect at all? I don't think any place has done it, and I don't even know if anyone has seriously sat down and theory-crafted it.
This sort of ranked choice voting would be a pretty good solution to the issues with the 5% barrier.
It would also empower small parties like Volt or ÖDP, especially in terms of party funding (which is tied to election results).
Although tbh, BSW (which are openly pro Russia, so their ranked choice might have been AfD) and FDP (whose understanding of their oft-touted economy is on the level of a second semester econ major with a trustfund) not making it into Parliament this time is the best thing about these otherwise pretty terrible eleven results.
Thanks for the new word, I like it!
I’m shocked AFD is eastern
I'm not. Populism thrives when people are dissatisfied and angry. East Germany is economically not as strong as the west, despite decades of reunion.
Sounds like it’s following in America’s footsteps, where rural and rust belt regions were kinda left behind by the federal government. The south is more complex but similar.
Soviet brain damage lingers on.
Many East Germans long for the DDR. It’s not surprising they vote for a party that wants to undermine democracy.
Sad to see 1/3 of german voted for nazi in both local and federal vote.
20% is 1/5. It is still too much but not the end. 80% did not vote for them. And the left go stronger too and keeps growing. This is the beginn of the fight, not the end.
Edit: I take it back. FUCK THE CDU!
It's funny to see Berlin, a Linke haven, lost in a huge sea of nazis.
“Extremes” both sides, ie. the Nazis and the Left party, are more popular in the east, no doubt because it is poorer, so people are less satisfied with the status quo.
It looks like it's just West-Berlin + a suburb of West-Berlin, while the rest of old East-Germany went fascist.
Edit: I had misread the map when I made the above comment. The CDU in West-Berlin are not the only non fascists, East-Berlin has not gone fascist, but mostly went for Die Linke.
"The planet is fine - the people are fucked." George Carlin
There’s the 1/5 AfD and 1/4 Union. Maybe the westies start to take the socio economic discrepancies between them and their eastern counterparts serious.
If you're wondering what the AfD districts in the West were: Gelsenkirchen in the north and Kaiserslautern in the south.
The most notable thing in Kaiserslautern is Ramstein air base and friends. I guess the military votes far-right.
I have no idea what's up with Gelsenkirchen. SPD came second with CDU just behind, so maybe it's what would be vote splitting in a dumber electoral system. As it is, the map is just a map.
You can find an interactive version here.
Gelsenkirchen is a traditional working class area, which used to be secure SPD heartland. SPD has lost voters massively to AfD among workers over the years, including among the immigrant working class.
Soldiers in Germany tend to vote CDU. The last couple of years the head of the Bundestag's defense commission Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann from the FDP was super popular. In the past SPD was also really strong. These two polls on the Bundeswehr subreddit have FDP and CDU together with a supermajority. Now that's of course not representative, but gives you an idea that the military doesn't vote far right.
It looks dramatic, but afaik the old GDR states have much lower pop and density. Unless germany starts some funny business with electors and whatnot, i daresay this is not that bad of a result.
It is so striking where AfD is popular thought.
A long time ago I visited one of my parents' friends in East Germany with them, and I said something about how it was good that Germany reunified after the wall fell.
My parent's friend said, people here don't think it was a good thing. People here felt like they lost the war.
I never realized that was a thing.
When you grow up in west Germany, you kinda never realize that the GDR was basically annexed by west Germany.
The majority of people in the GDR actually didn't want to turn capitalist, but they rather wanted another, more liberal form of socialism. Also, the Treuhand basically destroyed the east German industry which was then bought up by the West.
So, actually the "finally reunited" narrative is the one that's overly romantic, not (only) nostalgia for the GDR.
On top of that, East Germany didn't get the investment they were promised after unification. I don't think it is a coincidence that the people who didn't live under Neoliberalism 40 years ago are rejecting it today.
Interesting, indeed. Maybe it's a form of nostalgia? We still have plenty of people missing the comunists in my country, usually folk that had it better during the regime. But I never heard "we felt like we lost the war".
Reuters has an interactive map where you can see the percentages for each district
Shows a bit more of a positive view in the sense if your looking at this as an American and think AFD got a majority in all east Germany, they didn't, the bluest areas are 40-44% percent while most are at around the 32-36%, but they got the plurality. A bit depressing though in that all of west Germany they're taking 15-20% which this map doesn't show well
Based Aachen! 💚
Downvote me more please.
You can't display a map like this on map enthusiasts that gives a false representation of the election based on land area instead of population density and not be called out on it. It's a shit way to represent data and sows more discord than gives the proper story of what happened
Hmm, that's true.
Actually, if this wasn't a map community I'd be more worried. In theory people here will know maps hide heterogeneity.
Iron curtain still alive.
Can any Germans tell me what the deal is with the Left? It looks like the only seats they're winning are in areas you'd think of as AfD areas. Is it just a matter of the poorer more overlooked areas becoming polarised? Or are the German Left kinda tankish?
Here's an interactive map so you can see the percentages better. They are only winning the eastern cities with 21-25% while in the western cities they're getting 12-15% , so it's not like there killing it in Berlin and doing nothing in hamburg. If you compare it to 2021, they've made just as much gains in the western cities as they did in the east.
I'd say it's more about the poorer areas wanting a change either with the afd or linke/bsw. Most of the tankie elements of der linke have signed onto the bsw, so pining for the good old days of the gdr isn't really their selling point anymore. Unless you were just pining for the higher social security and not the authoritarian state or russian domination, which is a lot of people in the east. This split is also part of the reason for their gains in the West as more left leaning people who are hesitant to be associated with the old school communist now have a party.
You caneven see the big University cities in Germany: cologne, Münster, Aachen.
So, will the German Nazis use the same playbook as the American ones and claim that the election was rigged?
Unlikely, they're happy with their result.
It's however possible that the conservatives will run the Austrian playbook. Talks with the social democrats fail, "we have a responsibility to Germany to form a government", then make a coalition with the AfD (Nazis).
Back to your original question: the BSW will likely contest the elections, as they have missed the 5% threshold by only ~14k votes and there are evident irregularities. For example, many Germans living abroad, for example those living in the US, had almost no chance to cast their vote.
Talks with the social democrats fail, "we have a responsibility to Germany to form a government", then make a coalition with the AfD (Nazis).
That feels familiar somehow.
And people ask me why I would live in Cologne (Köln) if I had to live anywhere else.