Talk Elections

This will be a fairly long-running thing, but hopefully not too slow. The general idea will be to make maps showing support for each party in the elections between 1920 and 1932 (most likely starting with the Nazis), as well as one-off maps for the elections in 1919 and 1933. And probably some stuff after that, but who knows.

As a sort of stop-gap, I've done maps of the second round of both Presidential elections and also reposted the link to the maps of the November 1932 election I did a while ago.

PROJECT COMPLETE! :)

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Aforementioned map of Presidential elections. Minor mistakes possible.

Interesting, Al.

That's Saxony where Hitler won in 1932, isn't it? Aren't the NPD strong there today?

No, that isn't Saxony. The brown areas on the 1932 map are Brandenburg, Thuringia, Pomerania and  Schleswig-Holstein.

Saxony was considered a stronghold of the SPD and the communists during the Weimar Republic.

Data source?

You're right, that is Thuringia. I can remember my modern German states off by heart, but I couldn't put them all on a blank map.

My question stands though.

yes they are strong there.

there are strong all over east germany.

disgusting.

Al, not to be picky, could you either anti-alias your fonts or use something that isn't as hard to read?

I don't want to take away from the map quality, but the text is hard to read...is it just me?

If so, I'll shut up. :-p

Yes, and the NPD seems the be particularly strong in Saxony. However, it hasn't much to do with the way people voted in 1932 or something.

It's a bit hard for me. He's using a Germanic font.

It´s good practice for you guys ;) I think that it gives an authentic look to the maps. Reminds me of good old Algemeine Deutche Handatlas

I have been wondering who "Abolf Sitler" is ;) Any relation to Toronto Maple Leafs great Darryl Sittler?

For everyone who what to know more about the elections in the Weimarer Republik is this link useful http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/index.htm (http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/index.htm)

It is in german, but you see all results in this time.

The Boardbashi would like it to be known that people who complain about the use of fraktur will be thrown to the cats. Yes. The cats.


Yep; 'tis a good site that one. I think it's also on the links thread here.

What does "Boardbashi" mean anyway?

What electoral system did the Weimar Republic actually use?

BTW, the Weimar Republic only got that name after WW2.

What was your data source? The above mentioned site?

That would be telling :)


Yes. And no. At the same time.

Btw, I also have, somewhere, results (some results anyway...) of the 1917 Russian constituent assembly elections. Anyone interested in those?

Me! Me!

Yes, please. I'd like to see how badly the Bolsheviks got whipped.

"Father of the Board" in Turkmen, probably based on the late Turkmenbashi

What electoral system did the Weimar Republic actually use?
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Proportional representation w/ no thresholds IIRC

That's correct. Pure PR. No thresholds or direct seats. At least in Reichstag elections.


President: Popular election. If no candidate received more than 50%, a run-off was held with a simple plurality of votes being sufficient now.

Interestingly, candidates could be replaced between the two rounds. As a result, the candidates in the run-off weren't always the same candidates which had stood in the first round. In addition, all candidates from the first round could theoretically participate in the run-off too. So, no candidates were actually eliminated with the first round (except for those who chose to drop out or who where replaced by their respective parties).



Example - 1925 presidential election

First round
Karl Jarres (DVP, also endorsed by DNVP): 38.8%
Otto Braun (SPD): 29.0%
Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum): 14.5%
Ernst Thälmann (KPD): 7.0%
Willy Hellpach (DDP): 5.8%
Heinrich Held (BVP): 3.7%
Erich Ludendorff (NSDAP): 1.1%

Second round
Paul von Hindenburg (endorsed by DVP, DNVP, BVP and NSDAP): 48.3%
Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum, also endorsed by SPD and DDP): 45.3%
Ernst Thälmann (KPD): 6.4%

You're silly; it's quite clearly "Ubolf Sitler".

Thälmann didn't win a single state?

No, his scores in both 1925 and 1932 were both below 10% IIRC, which by far means, unless there's some favorite-son factor (think de Villiers 1995 and Royer 1974), he stands no chance at winning any state/division.

Interesting. I always thought of him as being a major candidate. I'm guessing he won a plurality in Berlin, though.

Well...I just talked with the cats...yes the cats...and they'd like some smoother fonts.

:-p

Ah yes. My bad.

That's not quite right. There were regional level constituencies with a threshold of 60,000 votes, and seats won there were upped at a national level to proportionality, but parties could at maximum only double their regional tally there. So it wasn't quite proportional for smaller parties.


President: Popular election. If no candidate received more than 50%, a run-off was held with a simple plurality of votes being sufficient now.

Interestingly, candidates could be replaced between the two rounds. As a result, the candidates in the run-off weren't always the same candidates which had stood in the first round. In addition, all candidates from the first round could theoretically participate in the run-off too. So, no candidates were actually eliminated with the first round (except for those who chose to drop out or who where replaced by their respective parties).



Example - 1925 presidential election

First round
Karl Jarres (DVP, also endorsed by DNVP): 38.8%
Otto Braun (SPD): 29.0%
Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum): 14.5%
Ernst Thälmann (KPD): 7.0%
Willy Hellpach (DDP): 5.8%
Heinrich Held (BVP): 3.7%
Erich Ludendorff (NSDAP): 1.1%

Second round
Paul von Hindenburg (endorsed by DVP, DNVP, BVP and NSDAP): 48.3%
Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum, also endorsed by SPD and DDP): 45.3%
Ernst Thälmann (KPD): 6.4%
[/quote]

Weren't seats given out on the basis of actual votes, rather than percentages? (might be mis-remembering there o/c)

D'Oh! I thought I had it all covered. ;)

Yes, that is correct.

Saxony State was never much of a Communist stronghold. THough Saxony Province (modern Sachsen-Anhalt, very approximately) was. As was Thuringia.
Saxony was of course an SPD stronghold, but not as strongly so in the Weimar time as it was during the Prussian occupation of Germany ("Reich").

Here's a map of the states of Weimar Germany:

http://www.thomasgraz.net/glass/map-D-1920.htm

While I'm grateful for the maps being posted, I'm having trouble reading the words, especially the party names.

Did Catholics vote overwhelmingly for Zentrum, or did they split their vote?

The differences between these entities were often marginal, however. In Reichstag elections, the KPD's share of vote tended to be a bit higher (between 0.5 and 3.0 percent) in the province of Saxony than in the state of Saxony.

However, the KPD always received higher percentages in the state of Saxony than they did nation-wide. So, the KPD was stronger in the province of Saxony than in the state of Saxony, but also stronger in the state of Saxony than in Germany as a whole.

Ah, there is this standard reference work about voters in the Weimar Republic by Prof. Jürgen Falter... I will try to piece together what I think to remember from that. :D

SPD - Working class
KPD - Also workers as well as a big chunk of unemployment people during the depression
Zentrum - Catholics (independent of class)
DDP/DVP/DNVP - protestant middle/upper class
NSDAP - also mostly protestant middle class

Of course this is extremely generalized here. There were some Catholics who voted SPD or workers who voted NSDAP, they simply did it less frequently.

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% vote NSDAP 1924-1932. Note that in 1924 they had deals and so on with other far-right parties. One of which polled something like 20% in Mecklenburg. The sort of scale used here is a bit different to the sort which will be used for other parties.

One thing I'll note here that I've never really spotted before; the second '32 election, the Nazi vote held up better in southern Germany than elsewhere. Anyone know why?

I'd be interested in a 1933 election map Al

Good question. Anything to do with Brüning not being in office anymore (ie, a Brüning personal vote depressing the July 32 Nazi vote in the South - perhaps vs a DNVP boost in their strongholds for Papen?) I also note that the July vote was less than two weeks after the Preußenputsch. Maybe the Nazis benefitted from that in the short run?

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DDP

A mix of those things might make sense. Where was Brüning based, btw?

Westphalia (which doesn't, of course, fit the theory.)

Maps of that election will be made (maybe fairly soon). 1933 hasn't been included with the main series of maps because the election wasn't free and, as such, isn't strictly comparable to the main set of elections.

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DVP. Note for the DDP in 1930 applies here also.

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DNVP. Some very odd patterns there...

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Zentrum (and BVP). Very stable pattern, as you'd expect, but the erosion of the party's vote in what is now (more or less) NRW shows up fairly well.

Should be added that the reactionary and particularist BVP was politically quite different from Zentrum.

Not very well at the moment so I'm making maps.

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Anyways, the USPD was the left-wing minority faction that emerged out of the split in the SPD in 1915/1916. The party was only significant in two elections; 1919 and 1920. Can't show 1919 right now for one or two reasons. The party split at the end of 1920 with the majority faction (in terms of members but not in terms of deputies) becoming part of the KPD and the minority faction ('' '') eventually, returning to the SPD. A tiny minority didn't join either party but were never electorally significant.

IIRC, the "U" stands for Unabhängige, which is a weird word.

These results clearly aren't by Land. What are they by?

Oh but they are. Except in Prussia where they are by province.

What's so weird about "unabhängig"? Just a loan translation from the latin "independent". German does those (loan translations from latin) a lot.

The pre-1945 Länder were fairly weird. (shrugs)

For some reason I made a map of the various Regierungsbezirk's and equivilents a few months ago but've never got round to using it:

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Reich Party of the German Middle Class (WP) in 1928

Their vote so got sucked up by the Nazis didn't it?...

Btw, KPD and SPD maps are now nearly done.

It sounds funny. That's all.


Ah. I was wondering where Prussia was.

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KPD.

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And finally... the SPD. The 1920 map is... um... a little weird... which is why the USPD map was uploaded first.

Bump.