Most left-wing and right-wing German states

[palandio]

From left-wing to right-wing:

Bremen
Berlin
Hamburg



Saarland



Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Hesse, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Brandenburg


=== German average ===
Rhineland-Palatinate
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony-Anhalt (it's not 2002 anymore)

Baden-Württemberg
Thuringia



Bavaria, Saxony

Exact positions are discutible. The Eastern states are generally more idiosyncratic, but since the emergence of the AfD they have been more right-wing than before.

[palandio]

It should, however be mentioned that there are very left-wing bastions in Saxony and Bavaria and very, very right-wing places in Brandenburg

In Saxony that would be particularly parts of Leipzig (e.g. Connewitz) and to a lesser degree parts of Dresden (e.g. Neustadt) that are very left-wing.

In Bavaria the cities of Munich, Nuremberg and Fürth are to the left of the German average and e.g. Munich has had SPD mayors since WWII (except for 1980-86). Still these cities aren't more left-wing than other major German cities. And even inside these cities there are no quarters that would be as left-wing as Berlin's inner-city quarters and the quarters slightly to the west of Hamburg's center.

In Brandenburg it's particularly the Southeast that already voted more to the right than the rest of Brandenburg before the AfD surge and which since then has moved even more to the right.

[palandio]

I took the combined CDU/CSU/AfD/FDP and SPD/Left/Greens results at the last federal election as orientation. Not a perfect measure by far, but you have to start from somewhere.

Brandenburg has always been more sparsely populated and less industrial than e.g. Saxony, with a focus on big agriculture. So maybe socialism and its social and economic effects where perceived differently by the ordinary population there. But I think that a lot just comes down to the SPD after 1989 being successful at becoming the "natural governing party" in Brandenburg due to local and personal effects, whereas in Saxony it was the CDU (which came as a surprise to many).

Regarding the Saarland there might be a size bias effect. Both SPD and Left are much stronger than the national average in the Saarland. I know that it has tradionally been the most Catholic state in Germany and (well into the 80s) dominated by a Christian Social tradition. But remember that the Ruhr area only became an SPD stronghold in the 60s. In fact the Saar is a bit like a much less extreme small-town Ruhr, but unlike in NRW there are no other areas that would offset the general lean. The same goes for Hesse and Lower Saxony which have areas that are clearly more left-wing than the Saar, but also many areas that are clearly more right-wing. So maybe a ranking of German states should account for that size bias.

Regarding Saxony-Anhalt, I classified it as slightly right of center. As I said, the exact positions are debatable. This holds even more for Eastern Germany where it's debatable if you can measure "right-wing" on the same scale as in the West. That being said, Saxony-Anhalt was also the first state with a PDS-tolerated SPD-Greens minority government. What does that tell us? (Not a lot, I guess.) I don't think that it makes sense to completely change the ranking each time there is political turmoil about broadcasting fees or something similar. I mean, in Thuringia a guy was already elected governor with votes from the AfD until the election was reverted. Did this make Thuringia the most right-wing state in the nation? And when after that Germany's only Left governor was again elected, did that make Thuringia the most left-wing state? Should we change the ranking every day based on what political twitter considers important?