Which party "won" which state in the German federal elections from 1949 to 2017

[Lechasseur]

What about (West) Berlin before 1990?

West Berlin was not allowed to vote in federal elections before unification. It was the D.C. of West Germany.

More like Puerto Rico.

DC wasn't even allowed to vote for President until the 1960s

[Lechasseur]

One thing that I think needs to be said is that the reason there have been so few "safe SPD" states is simply because how weak they have been in the last 15 years.

Before the SPD really started having problems after Schroder left office, NRW was pretty close to a safe SPD state, with the SPD having won it in every election between 1969 and 2005 except for 1983. In a scenario where elections are roughly 50-50 like in the US, I think it would be pretty close to "safe SPD". The thing is the last time an election was fairly close in Germany was in 2005. Maybe that changes this year.

But yeah you're not going to have many safe states one way or the other if you have the big vote percentage differences, swings and alternative parties to eat off votes from the two main parties you have in Germany. The US is very polarized with most states being safe for one party due to there being only two parties with a big cultural gap between the two.

[Lechasseur]

NRW used to vote strongly on the left of the country between late 1960s and late 1990s. Not in the early years of the FRG. Maybe because of Konrad Adenauer.

Yeah I think it was the Adenauer affect in part, I do wonder if secularization of the state may explain something as well (I'm not too familiar with the religious demographic history of Germany so I can't say for sure one way or the other).

Then NRW has the Ruhr region that's very industrial and leftwing, along with having a big, fairly cosmopolitan city in Cologne so the CDU would really have needed to run up the numbers elsewhere in order to win.

[Lechasseur]

What about (West) Berlin before 1990?

West Berlin was not allowed to vote in federal elections before unification. It was the D.C. of West Germany.

More like Puerto Rico.

DC wasn't even allowed to vote for President until the 1960s

I was rather referring to West Berlin/Puerto Rico's status as a remote, autonomous exclave that hasn't acquired full statehood, with its inhabitants holding citizenship but not (national) voting rights.

That's where the parallels end though, since Puerto Rico is indeed a formal part of the United States. West Berlin on the other hand was merely treated as a de facto part of the Federal Republic of (West) Germany, while it officially remained an Allied-occupied territory until 1990 (a status that had already ended for West Germany in 1955 with the Bonn-Paris conventions taking effect).

Ah I did not know that. I guess I learnt something here.

I definitely knew that West Berlin was still occupied (I have a family friend who was stationed there when doing his military service in the French Army in the 1970s) but I didn't know that it was not legally considered part of West Germany.