2013 Elections in Germany

[ingemann]

Literally their only well known policy is pushing for unrealistic, impossible tax cuts, and even that has bewn unsuccesful for them.

Maybe I'm just American, but I feel like more than 4% of the population would support that agenda...

Just because you have a point in you platform a lot of people could agree with doesn´t translate into voters. A lot of Americans would agree with part of the Libertarian, Green and Constitutional Parties platforms, but they won´t vote for them. If a party come across as a waste of your vote, dishonest, imcompetent or corrupt a lot of their core voting segment wiill not vote for them.

[ingemann]

Also, Hamburg-Mitte which is I the largest constituency in Germany.

To be fair, after Hamburg lost its seventh constituency back in 2005,it has become pretty difficult to split up the seven city boroughs onto six constituencies. Those constituencies that could sensibly take up parts of Hamburg-Mitte, namely Bergedorf-Harburg, Wandsbek, and Nord, are not much smaller. Having said that, the local SPD is anything but unhappy for the constituency to include some blue-collar suburbs (Billstedt, Finkenwerder, etc.) that keep it from falling to the Greens (which could at least have happened in 2009).
The more relevant case, however, is Hamburg-Nord, which contains all the wealthy suburbs along the Alster River, whether belonging to the Borough of Wandsbek or the Borough of Hamburg-Nord, as such packing most of the CDU-leaning districts into one constituency to ensure that in normal years (i.e. anything aside from 2009), the CDU gains only one and the SPD the other five Hamburg constituencies.

On the state level, the outgoing CDU/FDP coalition in Schleswig-Holstein strongly gerrymandered electoral districts back in 2012. First, they made heavy use of the 25% deviation tolerance to maximise the number of state constituencies on the west coast and in the North, which traditionally lean CDU. The smallest state constituency,  Flensburg-Land, contained slightly below 51.000 registered voters and was safely taken by the CDU. Other constituencies with less than 60,000 voters include Schleswig-Nord (CDU), Schleswig (CDU), Dithmarschen-Nord (CDU), Dithmarschen-Süd (CDU), Kiel-Ost (SPD), Steinburg-West (CDU), Steinburg-Ost (CDU), Pinneberg-Elbmarschen (CDU), and Pinneberg City (SPD).

This allowed them to deny a third constituency to the traditional SPD stronghold of Lübeck, instead  combining part of the city with its northern suburbs. The resulting constituency of Ostholstein-Süd is quite competitive (in 2012, the CDU won it by 0.9%). Remaining Ostholstein-Nord was expected to be safely locked in for the CDU), but was in an upset carried by the SPD in 2012 with an 0.5% margin (the proposed Fehmarnbelt link hurt the CDU heavily). All four a/m constituencies have close to 75,000 registered voters, Lübeck-Ost is, at 76.205 voters, the largest constituency in the state. As such, it would have easily been possibly to design five constituencies of around 60,000 voters each in the area.
 
They also combined SPD-leaning medium-sized cities with extensive rural hinterland. Neumunster (61,000 voters) was combined with neighbouring Boostedt, which holds the State's largest army camp. This reduced the SPD's margin from 2.7% on city level to 1.5% on constituency level, thus making the constituency potentially competitive.
The old, quite small Rendsburg constituency (48,000 voters), that would have been narrowly won by the SPD in 2012, was enlarged by rural areas to the south-west, which ensured a safe CDU win. Had it been enlarged by the south-eastern Rendsburg suburbs instead, the resulting constituency (58,000 voters) would have been extremely competitive - a calculated CDU lead of 128 votes (0.4%) in 2012. In a similar way, the enlarged Eckernförde constituency (72,500 registered voters) received sufficient rural areas to water down the SPD lean in Eckenrnförde town and the Kiel suburbs south of it, and keep it safely in CDU hands.

Not really something which surprise me, after I have read up on CDU's and FDP attempts to get SSW's mandates eliminated in the Landtag through judicial means.