Talk Elections

I've made some maps of recent elections in Frankfurt (thankee to the other beardy-weirdy here for the data :)) and thought, as not everyone looks through the gallery often, I might as well make a thread to stick them in as well. The thread isn't called Frankfurt Election Maps because maps of other places will be added at some point as well (and why make two threads when one will do). Anyway...

Larger (which also means clearer and generally prettier) versions of the maps posted here are always to be found in the Gallery. And, lo, other maps have been posted.

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2005 Bundestag election

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2006 City Council elections

What is the FAG?

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Mayoral (Oberbürgermeister) elections. So actually Lord Mayoral in English. 2001r was a runoff election.

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Wonderful maps, BTW. Could you post a map of income to put it into perspective?

"Flughafenausbaugegner Frankfurt"

Airport something Frankfurt.

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...

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

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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.

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

1987, actually. I was rounding. ;D

What's the story with the center district with high support from the FDP?

Posh urban area. FDP actually came second there in 2005.

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

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Hesse Landtag election, using the new standard key thingy.

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2003 election in Bavaria; direct seats again. Not entirely sure if they're the results on the boundaries used at the time or on new boundaries. Not that it matters. This is the base map, if you like, for the forthcoming election in Bavaria.

(and, yes, I know that "2008 Bavaria Election" looks weird or wrong. So what).

How is the political climate in Germany at the moment?  I paid attention when Merkel got in, but have slipped slightly in paying attention to it.

I have a Bavarian map, from election.de IIRC, that includes insets for major cities. Would you like to see?

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. The CDU has better held its support, but some have accused Merkel of running to the left of the SPD (or else have accused the SPD of running to the right of Merkel), making support fo the major parties somewhat confused.

Current polls suggest that a CDU-FDP coalition might be possible after the next election, but more likely is another result with no obvious coalition emerging, which might force the SPD to work with the Left Party in an SPD-Green-Left coalition. (The Greens and the FDP flat-out refuse to work with each other.) No one wants another Grand Coalition.


Of course, the balance of the parties would be different; while the SPD is currently just slightly smaller than the CDU, it would be a lot smaller after a new election, and the Left Party would be much larger. A good estimate of a result might be:

CDU/CSU: 34%
SPD: 25%
Left: 14%
Green: 12%
FDP: 12%
Others: 3%

... Which would mean no majority for CDU-FDP (or SPD-Green, obviously).

An average of the last 4 polls:

CDU - 36.3%
SPD - 25.2%
The Left - 12.5%
FDP - 11.4%
Greens - 10.8%
Others - 3.8%

Only Forsa is predicting a CDU-FDP coalition right now.

A red-red-green coalition would be the best-case scenario.

The SPD working with the Left party at national level would be seen as too controversial, given the latter advocate withdrawing from NATO. They are (or were, not sure)  coalition partners in Berlin but that itself was very controversial.

They are in Berlin, they were in Mecklenburg.

And to non-voters. 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.
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.

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. ;D ) 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. ;D

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2008 Hamburg elections

What is the super-CDU area in the center?

You may want to change the thread title, BTW.

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).

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

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.

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.)

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2003 party vote maps. Not sure whether it's the second vote or both the second and first votes combined. Either way, the Bavarian elections site is awful.

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A Linke map would be amusing :D

It's very difficult to tell apart the SPD and Linke on that map.

Not really, save for the very lighter shades.

That, or I'm going color-blind.

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.

lol


Mmm... trouble is I tend to associate purple with a certain British political party of the 1980's... ;D

But I'll probably change the winning-party colour to purple anyway; the reddish-orange is harder to tell from the rose-ish red then it looked last night.

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Hmm.

While working on the secondvote maps for Berlin, I noticed that that general rusty-red shade turns "quite" brownish when it gets dark. Hmm. Just looks offensive, even though it's not supposed to be.

I'll switch the Left colour to purple then; but, in order to demonstrate that I've not totally given in to the forces of sanity, only in the East ;)

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Secondvote maps

Those are great maps!

The Linke vote is interesting. Entirely predictable, of course, but interesting.

Talk about a city divided...

Berlin's election department has West vs. East results.

East
SPD 31.2
Linke 30.4
CDU 13.4
Greenies 11
FDP 4.9
etc

West
SPD 36.1
CDU 32.2
Greenies 14.1
FDP 8.6
Linke 4.2
etc

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

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NRW 2005

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

Interesting pattern on FDP support there. What's the intensely CDU area in the east with little FDP presence?

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


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.

I assume the next NRW election is next year?

Any idea on how Linke will do?

It'll be in 2010 unless they've changed the length of terms.

WA is that left-wing party, correct?

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.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.

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. ;D

;D


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.

Is the Sauerland (overall) somewhat less CDU than Paderborn because it's slightly less Catholic or because of the other differences [qm]

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. :P

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That's interesting. Thuringia and Saxony were once havens for the USPD and KPD.

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Note: pink seat in the centre of Leipzig is SPD, the one NE of that is PDS.

Could you do a NPD map for Saxony?

My comments on Thuringia stand. Brandenburg is still left-wing, though.

And I second the NPD request.

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 or becoming part of the local culture.

Why not, one wonders? :) 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.

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What's the very strong PDS wahlkreise out east?

And as you'd say, diolch ;D

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.

What's the "strong" (relatively so) FDP area in the southwest? Doesn't look like the normal wealthy urban/suburban area for the FDP.

Part of the Vogtland. The 8% for the FDP in the list vote seems to be coattails from the 25% (and second place!) the FDP's candidate for the direct seat there got; must have been some local notable or other.

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.

Big surprise, right? :P


Interesting if nothing else then.

Btw, I was surprised at the high NPD %'s north of Dresden. I'd sort of assumed that NPD strength was mainly in and around the Erzgebirge.

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Brandenburg list vote. Compare to the constituency vote map if you need a cheap laugh. Best part; the SPD actually won a constituency seat in a district that they trailed in the list vote! (one of the Potsdam districts). Admittedly the SPD candidate there was Platzeck himself but...

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.