German Election Results Thread

[minionofmidas]

We do not answer the random questions of Irishmen, unless it is easy to do so.

[minionofmidas]

While the SPD is ahead by almost 6 points in the list vote in Brandenburg State, she is tied in the constituency vote, trailing the Left by 1.odd in the Bundestag constituency vote, and by almost four points in the Bundestag list vote. (Results not strictly comparable as Bundestag count is closer to completion.)

[minionofmidas]

McPomm

turnout 63.1 (-8.2)
CDU 33.2 (+3.6)
Left 29.0 (+5.3)
SPD 16.6 (-15.2)
FDP 9.8 (+3.6)
Greens 5.5 (+1.5)
NPD 3.3 (-0.2)
Pirates 2.3

CDU 6 (+3), Left 1 (+1), SPD 0 (-4). Left just barely loses out in Neubrandenburg etc by 0.2, that would have made the CDU's first loss of the night otherwise.

[minionofmidas]

You know what? The remainder of this stuff can wait until tomorrow night.

[minionofmidas]

The region is western Rhineland with the high FDP-share is probably due to the proximity of Luxembourg. Many people commute there to work in the financial and insurance sector I guess.

Traditionally, vintners on the Mosel have been voting FDP.

[minionofmidas]

Remaining state results:

Schleswig-Holstein
turnout 73.8
CDU 32.2, SPD 26.8, FDP 16.3, Greens 12.7, Left 7.9, Pirates 2.1, NPD 1.0
Hamburg
turnout 71.1
CDU 27.9, SPD 27.5, Greens 15.6, FDP 13.2, Left 11.2, Pirates 2.6
Bremen
turnout 70.1
SPD 30.3, CDU 23.9, Greens 15.4, Left 14.2, FDP 10.6, Pirates 2.4, NPD 1.1
Brandenburg
turnout 67.1
Left 28.5, SPD 25.1, CDU 23.6, FDP 9.3, Greens 6.1, NPD 2.6, Pirates 2.5
Saxony Anhalt
turnout 60.5
Left 32.4, CDU 30.1, SPD 16.9, FDP 10.3, Greens 5.1, Pirates 2.4, NPD 2.2
Berlin
turnout 70.9
CDU 22.8, Left 20.2, SPD 20.2, Greens 17.4, FDP 11.5, Pirates 3.4, NPD 1.6, Animals 1.4
NRW
turnout 71.4
CDU 33.1, SPD 28.5, FDP 14.9, Greens 10.1, Left 8.4, Pirates 1.7

Some sidenotes:
Overhang seats were, for the CDU: 1 in Schleswig-Holstein, 2 in Mecklenburg Lower Pomerania, 4 in Saxony, 1 Thuringia, 2 in Rhineland Pfalz, 1 on the Saar and 10 in Baden Württemberg. For the CSU: 3 in (duh) Bavaria. For the SPD: none.
CDU in Hesse, and SPD in Bremen (not that it matters here) and Brandenburg got the worst of both worlds - no overhang, but no extra seats to distribute via the list either.

All five parties (counting the Union as one) won seats in every state. Even the Bremen FDP.

Greens above five % in every Eastern state - w00t.

The switch to Ste Lague actually mattered, and in the first, by party, distribution too (someone would need to do the math to see if it also affected by state distribution), costing the SPD a seat which (would have) went to the CSU (except it just meant one fewer overhang seat for them).

[minionofmidas]

Brandenburg, left actually won 22 direct Landtag seats to the SPD's 18 and the CDU's four. No overhang.

Schleswig-Holstein is all a matter of interpretation. Depending on what a phrase is supposed to refer to, there are two possible interpretations of the law. One gives a proportional distribution of
CDU 34, SPD 28, FDP 16, Greens 13, Left 6, SSW 4.
The other gives a hilariously non-proportional distribution of
CDU 34, SPD 23, FDP 14, Greens 11, Left 5, SSW 4
The Landeswahlleiterin chose to come up with her own interpretation that basically manages to use both interpretations at once, and pronounced
CDU 34, SPD 25, FDP 15, Greens 12, Left 5, SSW 4
to be the result.

Proportional result with the ordinary size of parliament would have been
CDU 23, SPD 19, FDP 11, Greens 9, Left 4, SSW 3.
CDU won 34 of the 40 direct seats - all but all three in Kiel and all three in Lübeck.

Theoretically, the interpretation used could yet change at the final proclamation, done by a body called the Landeswahlausschuss, where CDU+FDP are one vote shy of a majority. However, the SSW (one member there) has announced they'll accept the result. Whatever the Landeswahllausschuss decides may then end up in court - not only on whether it's a possible interpretation of the law (certainly true for interpretations one and two, rather dubious on interpretation three), but on whether it's constitutional, too. This question, too, is less than clearcut (for interpretations two and three, not interpretation one) though I'd lean to saying "no". All registered voters have standing to sue, so it's not as if the decision were up to the opposition parties alone.

It gets worse: The CDU-CSU-FDP federal coalition has a majority in the upper "chamber", the Bundesrat, only if Black-Yellow governs in Schleswig-Holstein.
And lol at BILD, btw. They (Frankfurt edition) tried to make it appear as if Carstensen had won
fair and square, though very narrowly, by simply not mentioning the existence of the SSW at all.

[minionofmidas]

Vera Lengsfeld got 11.6%. The worst result in Germany for the CDU.

Did she ever have a chance in her constituency, or did making a clean breast of things with her campaign poster hurt her chances?

her only chance probably consisted in hurting the CDU enough to prevent it from winning any direct seats in the city. (Alternatively, she never had one- I'd have to check her position on the list.)

I'm just surprised that out of all of Germany, the FDP has no areas that they have a concentration enough that they win direct seats.

They almost certainly could if they tried. Seats where the CDU is in first and the FDP is in second would easily vote FDP if the FDP made an effort.

Uh, how? Not only is the gap pretty damn large in all of them*, a quarter to a third of the FDP list voters (very conservative estimate. Used to be an actual majority, back in the 90s) are tactical voters who if pressed prefer the CDU to the FDP, and at least two thirds of the macro-left voters, if forced to choose, would chose the CDU candidate over the FDP as currently branded. It is not a liberal party. It's a secular conservative party. Think Hoyre, not LD, not (norwegian) Venstre. That's in terms of policy - in terms of style, think Fremskritt.

The FDP could win - does win, on current results - some inner city high wealth enclaves with 30% of the vote over splintered opposition, but nothing close to 1/10 the size of a Bundestag constituency. It won the day votes in Frankfurt's West End, where eleven of its nineteen precinct wins were located.

*there are more of them than I thought at first glance. All but three are in Bavaria or Baden Württemberg, of course.

[minionofmidas]

I had a look over changes in registered voters numbers... pretty fascinating.

Federally +0.4

High growth states:
Schleswig-Holstein +1.4
2%+ gains in Kiel +3.1, Pinneberg +2.3, Segeberg - Stormarn N +2.1. Decline in Steinburg - Dithmarschen S

Hamburg +2.1
2%+ gains in Mitte +3.2, Eimsbüttel +2.4. No declines.

Berlin +1.3
2%+ gains in Treptow-Köpenick +3.6, Pankow +3.4, Friedrichshain etc +3.4, Mitte +2.6. Declines in Reinickendorf, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg

Bavaria +1.5
2%+ gains in Erlangen +2.5, Nuremberg N +3.3, Regensburg +2.8, anywhere in Upper Bavaria not near the Inn or the Alps (Munich rural +2.8, Fürstenfeldbruck +2.4, Freising +3.0, Ingolstadt +2.3, Erding-Ebersberg a whopping +4.5) but especially - biggest nationally - in Munich herself: E +5.3, S +5.5, W +6.5, N +8.9!
Declines in Hof, Weiden, Bayreuth, Kulmbach, Bad Kissingen (but not Coburg) with Hof at -3.1% and the others below -2%.

Baden-Württemberg +1.3
Can't make out heads or tails on that one, except that South Baden is growing: Freiburg +2.7, Lörrach +2.2, Emmendingen +2.1, Konstanz +2.2 joined by Stuttgart S +2.9, Neckar-Zaber +2.5, Karlsruhe City +2.3, Tübingen topping the list at +3.9. Upper Swabia region that had four seats formed out of three grew 1.9% across the region, so presumably includes areas at over 2 as well. Meanwhile, declines in Mannheim, Karlsruhe Rural, Göppingen, Aalen-Heidenheim, Schwarzwald-Baar. Wth?

Averageish States
Lower Saxony +0.5
Declines across the nonmetropolitan Southeast, worst in Goslar etc -2.8 and Salzgitter-Wolfenbüttel -2.2, with Göttingen, Hildesheim, Hameln etc, Nienburg-Schaumburg, Helmstedt-Wolfsburg and Celle-Uelzen (but not Brunswick or Gifhorn-Peine) also posting declines. So does Friesland-Wilhelmshaven. 2%+ gains in Cloppenburg-Vechta +3.0 and Oldenburg +2.6
Six-out-of-five region in the northeast grew 1.2%.

Bremen +0.3
East up 1.3, West - Bremerhaven down 0.8

NRW +0.2
33 of the 64 seats posting declines, 32 of them forming a solid yin-and-yang-ish southeastern half of the state that begins at Oberbergischer Kreis, Solingen-Remscheid, Mettmann, Duisburg, Oberhausen, Recklinghausen, Hamm inclusive; Soest and Paderborn exclusive, Bielefeld inclusive. The 33rd is Mönchengladbach.
2%+ declines only in Gelsenkirchen -3.1 and Duisburg N -2.4
2%+ increases much more common, in Paderborn +2.4, Münster +3.0, Coesfeld +2.1, Steinfurt   III +2.1, Borken II +2.4, Rhein-Sieg NE +2.2, Bonn +3.1, Cologne III +2.6 with Cologne II topping the list at +4.3

Hesse +0.7
Big increases in Frankfurt (W +3.1, E +4.1). Declines in Waldeck, Schwalm-Eder and especially Werra etc -2.4

Rhineland-Pfalz +0.6
Declines in Neuwied, Bitburg, Mosel etc, Kreuznach, Pirmasens. Big gains in Mainz +2.9, S Pfalz +2.1 and especially Luxembourg Outer Trier +3.3

Declining States
Saarland -1.2
Homburg worst at -1.8, Saarlouis best at -0.7

Mecklenburg -1.4
Rostock up, and up by 2.4. Biggest declines in Neubrandenburg etc -3.7 followed by N Lower Pomerania -2.2

Brandenburg -0.2
Berlin suburbia growing, remainder decaying. Border change between Potsdam etc (which was getting to be too big) and Dahme-Spreewald, these two together grew by 3.4. Oberhavel up 3.9, Märkisch Oderland up 2.7.
OTOH, Prignitz down 3.0, Uckermark down 3.2, Cottbus down 3.3, Elbe-Elster down a whopping 5.1. Brandenburg down 2.1, Frankfurt (Oder) the only constituency within plus to minus 2 at -1.7 (Actually, I'm pretty sure Dahme-Spreewald is within that corridor as well, but producing an exact figure would be too much like work.)

Saxony -1.2
Double whammy of loss of one seat and district reform means seven constituencies remain unchanged (though the rural ones had name changes) and the remainder is all part of one big seat loss area.
Of these seven though, Dresden S up 5.2, Leipzig S up 5.0, Leipzig N up 2.7, while Vogtland down 3.6. Chemnitz, Leipzig rural,  Sächsische Schweiz - whatever at 1.odd declines.

States in final stage of occupation by humans
Thuringia -2.3
Erfurt-Weimar up a bit. Gera-Jena and (just barely) Gotha-Ilm down less than 2 points. Biggest declines in Greiz-Altenburg -4.4, Sonneberg etc -3.5, Kyffhäuser etc -3.2, Suhl etc -3.1. Eisenach etc at -2.5, Eichsfeld at just worse than -2.0.

Saxony-Anhalt -2.9
Again, double whammy of new districts and loss of a seat. Altmark is the only unchanged constituency at -3.1.

[minionofmidas]

I'll be doing constituency maps for the five major parties (list vote - probably CDU and FDP on one set, SPD, Left, Green on the next) and then other stuff. Including Left-Right.

Btw, if there are any other breakdowns for individual cities and so on I'll be happy to do those also. And also if there's postal-precinct stuff for Frankfurt again - I had fun last time I did that.

Frankfurt reduced the number of precincts while you were sleeping ill (ie, testrunning the new larger precincts for the Euros.) At least they kept the naming scheme. That means I'm not in all cases sure where the postal precincts are right now.
At least I got them to give me a huge printout map of the city with the new day voting precincts that is not for public sale!

[minionofmidas]

What other cities might you be happiest to do?

[minionofmidas]

What's with the pattern of FDP support in Schleswig-Holstein?

Presumably some of it is a Hamburg suburbia thing.

It extends quite far, if that's the case.

And Pinneberg would have to be darker.

I'd say it's got a lot to do with the overlap of state and federal elections, the deserved unpopularity (no, that's not quite right. People think he's a nice enough guy, just out of his depth in his current job.) of one Mr Carstensen, and the undeserved popularity of one Jürgen Kubicki (strongman of the Schleswig-Holstein FDP, old Möllemann buddy, utterly unscrupulous populist, very good at attacking the CDU from the Left, Right, and Center at once). And perhaps with affluence and protestantism.

[minionofmidas]

What other cities might you be happiest to do?

Just about anywhere, I think. Though larger ones first.

Hamburg?

Stadtteile results (excluding postals) from page 18

You hopefully still have your old map template.

Just in case:

[minionofmidas]

Munich and Berlin would be fun. The latter especially.

Berlin is difficult. No readily recognized units between boroughs and precincts. There are the former boroughs of course, which everybody recognizes, but are not officially recognized units. There are the Stadtteile, statistical entities that are mostly  little known (where they are different from the former boroughs) but quite well recognized in suburban Berlin, but I've never seen a result compiled by them. I actually tried to do approximate ones myself once. I suppose it would be possible to do a map by the city council constituencies.

(checks) Indeed it would. Results on page 50ff, and a map of that type but with far too few different shades on page 87

[minionofmidas]

The Greens also have this pattern (usually. Certain exceptions last year come to mind) of less regional deviation when they do well. The reason should be obvious.

[minionofmidas]

http://wahlen.stadt-koeln.de/bundestagswahl/2009/wahlpraesentation/index.html

Cologne o/c.

(Normalcy restored in Sürth btw as the Greens come fourth, though on 20% of the vote.)

[minionofmidas]

That's odd. Other people just find it "ironic" (usually they just mean displeasing to them) that the fall of the wall has allowed the Commies to regain a footing in the west.

[minionofmidas]

Oh aye. Pattern goes back all the way to 1980.

[minionofmidas]

Just because some explanations have been attempted doesn't necessarily mean they explain things.

[minionofmidas]

Little oddities I've been thinking about trying to understand but never have gotten around to, chapter 37

Why does Pforzheim city vote a little less "urban" than the surrounding district?

This year's results:
Pforzheim CDU 35.9, SPD 20.3, FDP 18.6, Greens 10.2, Left 8.8
Enzkreis CDU 33.8, FDP 20.2, SPD 19.9, Greens 12.1, Left 6.7

Alright, so the Left result doesn't look odd.

[minionofmidas]

And, yes, the Left did win a Stadtteil.

Which has next to no people in it. But a lot of warehouses and port facilities.

(Left also won a precinct in Frankfurt, and not really where you'd expect it. And at least two Saar municipalities - didn't check everything, and didn't check for the reason of trying to find Left wins, either.)

Normalcy restored for the Green map. Well, sort of. Too low compared to the national result (same goes for Frankfurt. Same reason, too. Wonder how many millennia it'll take the media to take note.)
Eimsbüttel looks weird with all those narrow SPD wins in the outer part of the borough - the posh bits by the Außenalster stand out much more thanks to that. (Though, predictably-but-not, they stand out best on the turnout map actually.)

[minionofmidas]

What kind of place votes like that?

1854 valid votes, CDU 686, Greens 367, FDP 340, SPD 190, Left 145. And "The Violets - Party for Spiritual Politics" in seventh place (behind the Pirates) at 20 votes, or above one percent.

Herdwangen-Schönach. Place in white hidden under the big bold W here.

Wiki throws up a company producing minesweepers, a church called "St Eulogius" and straddling the Rhine-Danube Continental Divide, and this place. The word "anthroposophisch" here probably explains a lot...

[minionofmidas]

Little oddities I've been thinking about trying to understand but never have gotten around to, chapter 37

Why does Pforzheim city vote a little less "urban" than the surrounding district?

This year's results:
Pforzheim CDU 35.9, SPD 20.3, FDP 18.6, Greens 10.2, Left 8.8
Enzkreis CDU 33.8, FDP 20.2, SPD 19.9, Greens 12.1, Left 6.7

Alright, so the Left result doesn't look odd.

What's Pforzheim like?

Gee, I haven't been there for eighteen years.

[minionofmidas]

Whoa.

CSU    66    25,00%
SPD    82    31,06%
FDP    19    7,20%
GRÜNE    13    4,92%
DIE LINKE    48    18,18%

Stadlern. One of two municipalities in Schwandorf district (in the Oberpfalz) to be carried by the SPD. Turnout of 59%. I'm not sure whether this result (or even the eligible voters number) includes postal voters.

[minionofmidas]

And Delbrück and Holweide switch sides compared to the locals.