🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[Middle-aged Europe]

"The likelihood that there will be a traffic light coalition is not only obvious but also very high. The SPD has won the election." - Carsten Linnemann, deputy leader of the CDU/CSU caucus in the Bundestag

"I assume with a high likelihood that we will go into the opposition and that Olaf Scholz will lead a traffic light coalition." - Carsten Körber, leader of the Saxony state chapter in the CDU/CSU Bundestag caucus

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Year	Chancellor candidate	CSU top candidate	Union (PV)	Union (%)	CSU (PV)	CSU (% fed.)	CSU (% Bav.)	CSU share
1949	Konrad Adenauer	Hanns Seidel	7,359,084	31.0%	1,380,448	5.8%	29.2%	18.8%
1953	Konrad Adenauer	Fritz Schäffer	12,443,981	45.2%	2,427,387	8.9%	47.8%	19.5%
19571)	Konrad Adenauer	Fritz Schäffer	15,008,399	50.2%	3,133,060	10.5%	57.2%	20.9%
1961	Konrad Adenauer	Franz J. Strauß	14,298,372	45.3%	3,014,471	9.6%	54.9%	21.1%
1965	Ludwig Erhard	Franz J. Strauß	15,524,068	47.6%	3,136,506	9.6%	55.6%	20.2%
1969	Kurt G. Kiesinger	Franz J. Strauß	15,195,187	46.1%	3,115,652	9.5%	54.4%	20.5%
19722)	Rainer Barzel	Franz J. Strauß	16,806,020	44.9%	3,615,183	9.7%	55.1%	21.5%
1976	Helmut Kohl	Franz J. Strauß	18,394,801	48.6%	4,027,499	10.6%	60.0%	21.9%
1980	Franz J. Strauß	Franz J. Strauß	16,897,659	44.5%	3,908,459	10.3%	57.6%	23.1%
1983	Helmut Kohl	Franz J. Strauß	18,998,545	48.8%	4,140,865	10.6%	59.5%	21.8%
1987	Helmut Kohl	Franz J. Strauß	16,761,572	44.3%	3,715,827	9.8%	55.1%	22.2%
19903)	Helmut Kohl	Theo Waigel	20,358,096	43.8%	3,302,980	7.1%	51.9%	16.2%
1994	Helmut Kohl	Theo Waigel	19,517,156	41.4%	3,427,196	7.3%	51.2%	17.6%
1998	Helmut Kohl	Theo Waigel	17,329,388	35.1%	3,324,480	6.7%	47.7%	19.2%
2002	Edmund Stoiber	Edmund Stoiber	18,482,641	38.5%	4,315,080	9.0%	58.6%	23.3%
2005	Angela Merkel	Edmund Stoiber	16,631,049	35.2%	3,494,309	7.4%	49.2%	21.0%
2009	Angela Merkel	Peter Ramsauer	14,658,515	33.8%	2,830,238	6.5%	42.5%	19.3%
2013	Angela Merkel	Gerda Hasselfeldt	18,165,446	41.5%	3,243,569	7.4%	49.3%	17.9%
2017	Angela Merkel	Joachim Herrmann	15,315,576	32.9%	2,869,744	6.2%	38.8%	18.7%
2021	Armin Laschet	Alexander Dobrindt	11,173,806	24.1%	2,402,826	5.2%	31.7%	21.5%

1) First election after Saarland's reunification with West Germany. Only time the CSU competed outside of Bavaria; the federal CSU result includes the Saarland votes.
2) The voting age had been lowered from 21 to 18, hence the marked increase in votes.
3) First election after Reunification, hence the large increase in votes.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Tagesspiegel did an interesting analysis of the election results in Berlin.

https://interaktiv.tagesspiegel.de/lab/abgeordnetenhauswahl-berlin-2021-karte-ergebnisse-wahlkreisergebnisse-stimmbezirke-ost-west-s-bahn-ring/

According to the analysis, Berlin can not only be divided politically in the former eastern and western parts of the Cold War, but also in the areas inside and outside of the Berlin Ringbahn ("Circle Railway") that surrounds the more central parts of city:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Ringbahn
 
In fact, the political division seems to be even greater when you separate the city by Ringbahn instead of the East/West distinction.


Bundestag election result for former West Berlin
SPD 24.3%
Greens 23.7%
CDU 18.5%
FDP 10.0%
Left 8.1%
AfD 6.7%
(Turnout: 75.0%)

East Berlin
SPD 22.3%
Greens 20.5%
Left 16.1%
CDU 12.3%
AfD 10.8%
FDP 7.9%
(Turnout: 75.4%)


Inside of the Ringbahn
Greens 35.0%
SPD 20.6%
Left 14.2%
CDU 10.1%
FDP 8.3%
AfD 4.0%
(Turnout: 78.3%)

Outside of the Ringbahn
SPD 24.6%
CDU 18.4%
Greens 17.0%
AfD 10.3%
Left 10.2%
FDP 9.4%
(Turnout: 74.1%)

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

I'd like to remind everyone that I conducted a poll - four years ago !!! - about Merkel possibly breaking Kohl's record as longest-serving chancellor of (post-WWII) Germany.

[RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm]

...and because the rule has always been (at the very least) to map all parties with seats:

No offense to your other (great) maps, but this is the content I come to Altas for.

[DL]

Why is there such a big difference in voting patterns between the northern and southern parts of the former East Germany what with the SPD doing so well in Mecklenberg Vorpommern and Brandenburg, while in Saxony and Thuringia the SPD is so weak and the AfD is so strong? I understand the north south split in western Germany because there the south is very Catholic and the north is very Protestant and that creates political cleavages. But as far as I know the former DDR is pretty uniformly Protestant if not atheist, so there must be some other explanation

[H. Ross Peron]

Why is there such a big difference in voting patterns between the northern and southern parts of the former East Germany what with the SPD doing so well in Mecklenberg Vorpommern and Brandenburg, while in Saxony and Thuringia the SPD is so weak and the AfD is so strong? I understand the north south split in western Germany because there the south is very Catholic and the north is very Protestant and that creates political cleavages. But as far as I know the former DDR is pretty uniformly Protestant if not atheist, so there must be some other explanation

There was an extensive discussion on political patterns in Saxony dozens of pages ago in this thread:

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=305773.msg8239797#msg8239797

[Epaminondas]

...and because the rule has always been (at the very least) to map all parties with seats:

Who makes these beautiful maps? The watermark reads A.E. in Fraktur.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Perhaps the person who posts them...

[Lechasseur]

Did the AfD do well in Berlin or any cities?

You can find this answer by using Google, no offense, but I highly urge you to lose Google and learn about some of these countries before posting here, to put it charitably, your knowledge of foreign politics is very lacking.

Thank the good lord Germany abolished it’s monarchy or we’d be swamped by his bizarre questions on who would make a better Kaiser post Merkel…

Haha

Seriously though, the Chancellor is just the German name for the Prime Minister, there would be a chancellor leading the government even under the Kaiser (Emperor), and the Chancellor would likely be the leader of the largest party just like they are IRL, while the Kaiser would be a hereditary member of the House of Hohenzollern.

And Imperial Germany and Austria had chancellors, so it's not a new concept.

So even in a hypothetical situation where Germany still had an Emperor, Merkel would be Kanzler and not Kaiser.

[urutzizu]

Second vote by Gemeinde. For some reason the news websites don't show an entire national map, but some show some states and others show other states. So I tried merging them, that's why the colouring is off. White is forests and stuff.

Frankfurter Rundschau has an nice interactive map for BY, BW, SL, HE, NRW, NS, SA, BR, HA, SH:
https://www.fr.de/politik/bundestagswahl-2021-als-interaktive-karte-ergebnisse-aus-allen-11-000-gemeinden-zr-90980562.html

(Scroll down, click on "Gemeinden")

Tagesschau does it for the rest:
https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2021-09-26-BT-DE/index.shtml

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Excellent in itself and maybe very useful - same for the linked Berlin polling district maps earlier in the thread.

[Astatine]

Second vote by Gemeinde. For some reason the news websites don't show an entire national map, but some show some states and others show other states. So I tried merging them, that's why the colouring is off. White is forests and stuff.

Frankfurter Rundschau has an nice interactive map for BY, BW, SL, HE, NRW, NS, SA, BR, HA, SH:
https://www.fr.de/politik/bundestagswahl-2021-als-interaktive-karte-ergebnisse-aus-allen-11-000-gemeinden-zr-90980562.html

(Scroll down, click on "Gemeinden")

Tagesschau does it for the rest:
https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2021-09-26-BT-DE/index.shtml

Detailed results for Saarland in a map are available here: https://www.sr.de/sr/home/nachrichten/dossiers/wahlen/bundestagswahl_2021/saarland_bundestagswahl_2021_gemeindeergebnisse_100.html

[Geoffrey Howe]

Looking at that, one area where the Union seems to have held up pretty well is the wealthy surrounds of Munich.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Tagesspiegel did an interesting analysis of the election results in Berlin.

https://interaktiv.tagesspiegel.de/lab/abgeordnetenhauswahl-berlin-2021-karte-ergebnisse-wahlkreisergebnisse-stimmbezirke-ost-west-s-bahn-ring/

According to the analysis, Berlin can not only be divided politically in the former eastern and western parts of the Cold War, but also in the areas inside and outside of the Berlin Ringbahn ("Circle Railway") that surrounds the more central parts of city:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Ringbahn
 
In fact, the political division seems to be even greater when you separate the city by Ringbahn instead of the East/West distinction.

The housing referendum results are probably the most useful for getting a binary "split" of the city.

[Astatine]

Regarding the Saarland analysis, I have to retract some initial assumptions I made, since now I finally compared not only the results themselves but also gains and losses compared to the 2017 election.

Firstly, I analyzed how parties performed in precincts compared to their respective unemployment rates (I used Green district votes, indicated by other scattering symbols):



The SPD is the only true remaining "Volkspartei": They did well everywhere, no matter if the precinct had high or low unemployment rates. For CDU, FDP and Greens, a downward trend is visible, although there are some outliers for the Greens especially. the precincts in which the Greens did exceptionally well (>20 %) are mostly typical "alternative" quarters where many students live. A possible explanation could be that many of those residents tend to be younger, including many University students (which don't account for unemployed afaik).
A possible reason could be that some of them just finished their degrees (new semester) and just have not found a job yet and thus are counted as unemployed. Many of those quarters also have people working in creative fields, therefore they might also be unemployed right now depending on how theaters etc. do contracts right now during Covid. But I am not exactly sure. The areas with low unemployment rates and low Green vote are all suburban.

For Die Linke, it's more of a wash: They did very well in those alternative areas, while being trounced in the suburbs. Linke still could appeal to some "ancestral voters" they used to appeal to over here. AfD meanwhile clearly gains the most in areas with most unemployed.

So now, let's look at wins and losses of parties compared to the Green result in 2017:



The stronger the Greens were in 2017, the more did SPD and Linke gain. Some precincts even saw gains for the latter in spite of the terrible showing elsewhere. For AfD, it is obviously the opposite, while the CDU is a wash. For the FDP, the result shows no correlation to the Green performance in 2017.

Now wins/losses compared to CDU losses:



The exit poll analyses that showed that many CDU voters went to the SPD is confirmed here: In areas, where the CDU loses a lot, the SPD gains the most. For the FDP, it is a wash surprisingly, the Liberals seemed to have gained voters from CDU and Greens as well as non-voters.

[President Johnson]

What's also interesting is how different certain districts and Landkreise (counties) are represented, depending on party lists. In mine (Böblingen), every Bundestag party except Die Linke has a member: CDU (Marc Biadacz, directly elected), SPD (our own freshwoman Jasmina Hostert, big FF), FDP (Florian Thoncar, relatively well known FDP politician), Greens (Tobias Bacherle, another freshman who just finished university) and AfD (far-right sleazybag Markus Frohnmeier).

Funny enough, former Linke Leader Bernd Riexinger is also from our county and entered the Bundestag on a list mandate, though he ran in Stuttgart.

[mileslunn]

Second vote by Gemeinde. For some reason the news websites don't show an entire national map, but some show some states and others show other states. So I tried merging them, that's why the colouring is off. White is forests and stuff.

Frankfurter Rundschau has an nice interactive map for BY, BW, SL, HE, NRW, NS, SA, BR, HA, SH:
https://www.fr.de/politik/bundestagswahl-2021-als-interaktive-karte-ergebnisse-aus-allen-11-000-gemeinden-zr-90980562.html

(Scroll down, click on "Gemeinden")

Tagesschau does it for the rest:
https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2021-09-26-BT-DE/index.shtml

Very interesting, tried going through to places I have been in Germany.  Curious why Greens so strong in big cities while SPD seems more in smaller places including some rural?  While I know Germany is different, in most English speaking country, rural tends to vote for right wing parties and that seems only true in southern parts of country, not northern rural areas.  Are Greens more culturally progressive while SPD more your traditional blue collar type party?  I know in English speaking world big reason right has gained in smaller working class communities is on cultural as opposed to economic issues while big cities tend to be very progressive and woke which turns off many other areas so curious if this dynamic is showing up in Germany or more unique to Anglosphere.

[Oryxslayer]

Second vote by Gemeinde. For some reason the news websites don't show an entire national map, but some show some states and others show other states. So I tried merging them, that's why the colouring is off. White is forests and stuff.

Frankfurter Rundschau has an nice interactive map for BY, BW, SL, HE, NRW, NS, SA, BR, HA, SH:
https://www.fr.de/politik/bundestagswahl-2021-als-interaktive-karte-ergebnisse-aus-allen-11-000-gemeinden-zr-90980562.html

(Scroll down, click on "Gemeinden")

Tagesschau does it for the rest:
https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2021-09-26-BT-DE/index.shtml

Very interesting, tried going through to places I have been in Germany.  Curious why Greens so strong in big cities while SPD seems more in smaller places including some rural?  While I know Germany is different, in most English speaking country, rural tends to vote for right wing parties and that seems only true in southern parts of country, not northern rural areas.  Are Greens more culturally progressive while SPD more your traditional blue collar type party?  I know in English speaking world big reason right has gained in smaller working class communities is on cultural as opposed to economic issues while big cities tend to be very progressive and woke which turns off many other areas so curious if this dynamic is showing up in Germany or more unique to Anglosphere.

Reminder that you are comparing 26% to 25% to teens of percent. A lot of the maps is margins less than 5%, so you can't exactly judge too much without more data than just this map.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If equivalent data existed for GB you would be surprised at some elections - not so much 2019 of course, but certainly some others - at how many quite small places would be shaded red. Anyway, relatively few Gemeinden are purely rural in character: as a rule we're talking one or more fair sized towns plus their rural hinterland.

[President Johnson]

FDP is scheduled to meet with both SPD (afternoon) and Union (evening) today. SPD and Greens will also meet in the evening. FDP Leader Christian Lindner and his General Secretary Volker Wissing in recent comments aleady seem to slowly distance themselves from the Union. Wissing said something like "the Union must resolve whether they speak with one voice." Lindner stated: "CDU and CSU must clarify whether they actually want to lead a government. Some from within the CDU speculate their party might be back in the game after negotations for a trafficlight coalition failed. This is unconscionable for the country." Lindner wants a government formed before New Year's eve.

Meanwhile, 2017 SPD Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz called upon Laschet to resign after clearly losing the election. And even CDU Deputy leader, Health Minister and Laschet ally Jens Spahn demanded renewal of his party, both in terms of political contents and leadership. Whatever that means...

Hardly a surpirse, leadership of the Green Youth announced their staunch opposition to a Jamaica coalition and preference for a government led by Social Democrats.

[palandio]

If equivalent data existed for GB you would be surprised at some elections - not so much 2019 of course, but certainly some others - at how many quite small places would be shaded red. Anyway, relatively few Gemeinden are purely rural in character: as a rule we're talking one or more fair sized towns plus their rural hinterland.

To complicate things further, administrative reforms mostly are responsibility of the states (Ländersache, to use a colloquial term you can hear very often)

NRW was very consequential with its administrative reforms and today there are only 396 Gemeinden left, with an average population of 45,000, a median population of 21,000, an average area of 86 km² and a median area of 75 km².

Rhineland-Palatinate on the other hand still has 2,305 Gemeinden, with an average population of 1,800, an median population of 560, an average area of 8.6 km² and a median area of 5.75 km². Many administrative tasks are delegated to the Verbandsgemeinden that comprise a number of neighboring Gemeinden.

These massive differences of course affect the viability of Gemeinden as a useful level for statistics. Just look at NRW and Rhineland-Palatinate on the map above, they are really difficult to compare. It's clear that for official statistics like electoral statistics this is what you get by default, but in other areas professional users have switched to other aggregations like postal codes when possible (in the case of electoral statistics it's of course basically impossible).

[Middle-aged Europe]

FDP is scheduled to meet with both SPD (afternoon) and Union (evening) today. SPD and Greens will also meet in the evening. FDP Leader Christian Lindner and his General Secretary Volker Wissing in recent comments aleady seem to slowly distance themselves from the Union. Wissing said something like "the Union must resolve whether they speak with one voice." Lindner stated: "CDU and CSU must clarify whether they actually want to lead a government. Some from within the CDU speculate their party might be back in the game after negotations for a trafficlight coalition failed. This is unconscionable for the country." Lindner wants a government formed before New Year's eve.

Meanwhile, 2017 SPD Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz called upon Laschet to resign after clearly losing the election. And even CDU Deputy leader, Health Minister and Laschet ally Jens Spahn demanded renewal of his party, both in terms of political contents and leadership. Whatever that means...

Hardly a surpirse, leadership of the Green Youth announced their staunch opposition to a Jamaica coalition and preference for a government led by Social Democrats.

Yeah, bottomline is that leading figures of the FDP continue to underline the greater ideological commonality with the CDU/CSU while at the same time starting to publicly question the readiness and willingness of the Union parties to enter (and lead) the next government. Could be considered a sign that the FDP is positioning itself for Traffic light and that the talks with the CDU serve the purpose of showing their own base that they had at least tried to make Jamaica work.

[President Johnson]

FDP is scheduled to meet with both SPD (afternoon) and Union (evening) today. SPD and Greens will also meet in the evening. FDP Leader Christian Lindner and his General Secretary Volker Wissing in recent comments aleady seem to slowly distance themselves from the Union. Wissing said something like "the Union must resolve whether they speak with one voice." Lindner stated: "CDU and CSU must clarify whether they actually want to lead a government. Some from within the CDU speculate their party might be back in the game after negotations for a trafficlight coalition failed. This is unconscionable for the country." Lindner wants a government formed before New Year's eve.

Meanwhile, 2017 SPD Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz called upon Laschet to resign after clearly losing the election. And even CDU Deputy leader, Health Minister and Laschet ally Jens Spahn demanded renewal of his party, both in terms of political contents and leadership. Whatever that means...

Hardly a surpirse, leadership of the Green Youth announced their staunch opposition to a Jamaica coalition and preference for a government led by Social Democrats.

Yeah, bottomline is that leading figures of the FDP continue to underline the greater ideological commonality with the CDU/CSU while at the same time starting to publicly question the readiness and willingness of the Union parties to enter (and lead) the next government. Could be considered a sign that the FDP is positioning itself for Traffic light and that the talks with the CDU serve the purpose of showing their own base that they had at least tried to make Jamaica work.

Some politicial observers already say trafficlight might be the better option of the FDP and some of their leading figures secretly prefer it. A red-green-yellow government would allow the Free Democrats to occupy the centrist or pro-business/solid budgets lane that otherwise the Union would do and pose as a "corrective" for SPD and Greens when it comes to economic growth. CDU/CSU may find themselves in further misery as they would seem more or less obsolete. Their "competence values" in polls have already massively declined when it comes to economic policy.

Also, Lindner isn't stupid and can read polls. In the most recent ZDF survey, even most FDP voters now prefer that option and think it more stands for renewal to saving Laschet into a Jamaica coalition.

[Middle-aged Europe]

FDP is scheduled to meet with both SPD (afternoon) and Union (evening) today. SPD and Greens will also meet in the evening. FDP Leader Christian Lindner and his General Secretary Volker Wissing in recent comments aleady seem to slowly distance themselves from the Union. Wissing said something like "the Union must resolve whether they speak with one voice." Lindner stated: "CDU and CSU must clarify whether they actually want to lead a government. Some from within the CDU speculate their party might be back in the game after negotations for a trafficlight coalition failed. This is unconscionable for the country." Lindner wants a government formed before New Year's eve.

Meanwhile, 2017 SPD Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz called upon Laschet to resign after clearly losing the election. And even CDU Deputy leader, Health Minister and Laschet ally Jens Spahn demanded renewal of his party, both in terms of political contents and leadership. Whatever that means...

Hardly a surpirse, leadership of the Green Youth announced their staunch opposition to a Jamaica coalition and preference for a government led by Social Democrats.

Yeah, bottomline is that leading figures of the FDP continue to underline the greater ideological commonality with the CDU/CSU while at the same time starting to publicly question the readiness and willingness of the Union parties to enter (and lead) the next government. Could be considered a sign that the FDP is positioning itself for Traffic light and that the talks with the CDU serve the purpose of showing their own base that they had at least tried to make Jamaica work.

Some politicial observers already say trafficlight might be the better option of the FDP and some of their leading figures secretly prefer it. A red-green-yellow government would allow the Free Democrats to occupy the centrist or pro-business/solid budgets lane that otherwise the Union would do and pose as a "corrective" for SPD and Greens when it comes to economic growth. CDU/CSU may find themselves in further misery as they would seem more or less obsolete. Their "competence values" in polls have already massively declined when it comes to economic policy.

Also, Lindner isn't stupid and can read polls. In the most recent ZDF survey, even most FDP voters now prefer that option and think it more stands for renewal to saving Laschet into a Jamaica coalition.

The majority for Traffic light among FDP supporters is still a rather slim one so Lindner has to make the effort to bring everyone on board. But yeah, he also said today that the "red lines" for a goverment participation of his party are no tax hikes and no more debt. I guess this was directed at SPD and Greens rather than CDU/CSU.