Germany Election Maps

[minionofmidas]

What is the FAG?

FlughafenAusbauGegner. Anti-Airport Expansion list. That issue's been festering (once again) for ten years now. Note the highly concentrated support base.

Name's a pun with the former name of the company managing the airport, which now calls itself Fraport because the old name was disadvantageous in business dealings with English speaking countries.

[minionofmidas]

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Such data is not being compiled by government here.

The best I could give you is unemployment figures... or twenty year old figures on social housing...

[minionofmidas]

Also, there's this cutie from the gallery, also mostly on 20-year old data:

[minionofmidas]

What is the very high working class district in the bottom southwest? Airport?

Yep. Just a handful of people (like...double digits), and I think they're all workers in temporary company housing.

[minionofmidas]

Don't think that data's exactly accurate- it's pre-reunification for a start if its from 1988.

1987, actually. I was rounding.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah... the West End. Just compare the Class map.

[minionofmidas]

The SPD is struggling due to the Grand Coalition and have lost a lot of support to the Left Party and (to a lesser extent) to the Greens.

And to non-voters.

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Don't listen to silly journalists, nobody but them is suffering from any delusions on this front. What is true is that Merkel is personally quite popular among the kind of voter likely to stay true to the SPD - although I totally fail to understand why - but it doesn't seem as if that popularity is going to translate into votes.

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Unlikely for now. Will of course happen eventually, but the SPD still has a steep facts-of-life-accepting curve ahead of it. More likely is a renewed Grand Coalition, with much weakened SPD, or god forbid, a "Jamaican" coalition of CDU, CSU and FDP with an emasculated Green figleaf. Such a course for the Greens would have the potential to be suicidal, but sadly cannot be wholly ruled out. A "traffic light" (SPD-Green-FDP) coalition would make a certain amount of sense, obviously (at least if you believe the FDP to be to the left of the CDU, which except on a number of social issues I consider to be, basically, bollocks. Oh well...) but is even less likely.

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A lot depends on turnout. If turnout is at ordinary levels, I don't really see much chance, given demographic trends and changes in economic and political climate, of CDU-CSU-FDP repeating (let alone increasing) their 2005 take. They usually go down in the polls late in campaigns, and there's a good reason for it.
Turnout depends, in turn, on SPD strategy. SPD voters, more than any other party's, need to be provided with something to vote for... both in the sense of vision / visible difference from the CDU (which rules out a run to the right, unless the CDU/CSU stupidly does the same, as in 1980), and in terms of looking like they have a chance (which limits the possibilities of running to the left. ) and, crucially, looking united and like they know what they're doing.

All of which means I'm somewhat pessimistic about turnout and about the eventual SPD result right now, and not at all inclined to rule out a CDU-CSU-FDP majority after the elections.

[minionofmidas]

What is the super-CDU area in the center?

Hafen City which is, I think, the Hamburg version of the Docklands in London (not sure if you'll get the reference. Google LDDC if you don't).

I didn't, actually. But I do now. What's the other adjoining blue area?

Hamburg Old Town. Ie the Hamburg version of the City of London, except more shopping-oriented - I wonder where, exactly, the handful of residents are living, but wherever it is it's obviously in very posh accomodation.

What's that ward where Die Linke broke 20%?

Off the top of my head, either this is Veddel - couple of blocks of very working class but perfectly normal looking, old growth, housing surrounded by port/warehousing/etc surroundings for kilometers on end in every direction. Or Veddel is the one just to the east of it, in which case this is port/warehousing etc with a very small no. of inhabitants interspersed over the area.

[checks map] Veddel is the one to the east. The total pop. of the area is 1400, mostly towards the eastern side. (The Old Town's is about 1500.)

[minionofmidas]

Not "very" difficult, but not extremely easy either.

Anyways, Al uses a shade of red for the Left that strongly connotes SPD to me, because the SPD actually has used that particular shade in the past. He should do what the Germans do and use purple for the Left.

[minionofmidas]

Wow, telling apart that Left seat in Rostock is pretty hard.

[minionofmidas]

Interesting pattern on FDP support there.

That's just a pattern of money. If you want an FDP pattern in West Germany that isn't the exact antithesis of interesting, may I suggest you look at wine-growing areas of Rhineland-Pfalz.

WA is that left-wing party, correct?

Mid-short answer: "WA" is newspeak (hey, Al is Ingsoc, right?) for WASG, which is what the PDS merged with to form the Left.

Short answer: Yes.

I'm not too familiar with NRW. I assume the very red area is part of the Ruhr?

Yep. It's the area between Duisburg and Hamm.

What's the intensely CDU area in the east with little FDP presence?

The Sauerland and the area around Paderborn. Don't know much about it, other than that it's rural and catholic (and has trees). IIRC Lewis has family ties to the area, so he might know more.

The darkest bits are mostly around Paderborn and Höxter, not in the Sauerland (which  is further south, and extends westward to the edges of the Ruhr area. Which is the part of it that my dad's from.)
Yeah, old non-poor Catholic enclave, Paderborn. Not too unlike Fulda, then.

[minionofmidas]

Mid-short answer: "WA" is newspeak (hey, Al is Ingsoc, right?)

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Doh. I do hope that that isn't similar to, say, confusing southern Shropshire with northern Herefordshire...

Eh, there's some just as dark bits in the Sauerland (a working definition of which would be the Hochsauerland, Soest, Olpe, and rural and/or southern parts of the Märkischer districts. I suppose one might want to exclude the northern fringe of Soest, but...). Which is almost as Catholic, but (historically) a poor upland smallholding region. Paderborn counts as part of East Westphalia, a well-defined region despite its awkward name, although, as it were: quintessential East Westphalia is further north, and Protestant. The Sauerland is more likely to look to Dortmund as a sort of metropolis-outside-the-region-proper.
The Paderborn region used to be its own prince-bishopric, while the Sauerland was mostly a Cologne possession, with some small states at its western fringe.

[minionofmidas]

Meh, who knows. Higher prot rates should figure in Soest and the Mark. Then again, the Mark's the most industrialized part as well (very old industry mostly. Of course, same goes for Arnsberg.) And I don't really know enough about Paderborn.

[minionofmidas]

Note that in the 2005 election the combined SPD-Left-Green vote was over 50% in both Saxony and Thuringia (actually it might have been just over 60% in the latter). Voting patterns in the East are much looser than in the West and are often strongly influenced by personalities and so on.
Regardless, the main reason for Saxony remaining such a Left (SPD especially) stronghold (in terms of elections, if not state governments) throughout the Weimar period was the strength of the party organisation and related organisations and subcultures. What was left of this that survived the Nazi State was totally destroyed by the Stasi State.

But the Stasi was unable to put a strong SED organization in its place?

Not sure what you mean here. The SED was not a political party in the way that modern parties are, let alone the parties of the '20's and early '30's. Political parties in totalitarian states are not exactly geared around winning elections

Why not, one wonders?

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Actually, if they take themselves too seriously, they frequently are. As was the case with the SED, up to a point.

But Saxony's Social Democratic tradition (a grandfathered '48er tradition, really) was built around general opposition to everything, not around socialist ideology. Small wonder they didn't take to the SED either.

[minionofmidas]

What's the very strong PDS wahlkreise out east?

Hoyerswerda

Is it industrial at all? What explains the PDS vote?

It was a major centre of heavy industry (lignite related, mostly) in the old DDR. Population these days is something like half that of the early '80's IIRC.

GDR-built New Town. (Although it was a district seat back in the 19th century, so there must be some kind of old core. I passed through town last year, and it's way ugly.

Some lignite strip mining in the area still, btw. Looks like a cross between hell and the surface of the moon. Oh, and Sorbians (in the villages, mostly). And 100% of Germany's wild wolves.

[minionofmidas]

It's like an enlarged Berlin.

What's the strong SPD area in the northwest?

The Prignitz (well, part of it).

No idea why the strong SPD result.