2013 Elections in Germany

[minionofmidas]

Change in size of electorate, 2009-2013.

Using Al's basemap and shades from his key.



The loss at Ludwigsburg (northwestern suburbs of Stuttgart) strikes me as bizarre. Quite possibly an error in the official data.

[minionofmidas]

Anyways, gentrification ahoy.

[Tender Branson]

Change in size of electorate, 2009-2013.

Using Al's basemap and shades from his key.



The loss at Ludwigsburg (northwestern suburbs of Stuttgart) strikes me as bizarre. Quite possibly an error in the official data.

A map of population gain/loss basically.

Compare with this:

http://www.citypopulation.de/php/germany-admin.php

Go to "change" and "level 2".

...

Ludwigsburg could be off, but not necessarily: For example if the population between 2009-2013 only increased because of foreigners moving there, while the German population declined because they went elsewhere or more died than were born.

[minionofmidas]

A map of population gain/loss, amended by changes in foreigner rate (through naturalization and migration) and changes in the rate of minors.
Hence how heavily the rampant gentrification in many cities is showing up.
Driven in part by the banking crisis - making houses to let a highly attractive investment option for people with too much money.

Doing that map by constituency rather than political districts has the fringe benefit of giving some indication of the population distribution as well.

[Yeahsayyeah]

The total collapse of the birth numbers since 1989/91 in the East with 1994/95 being at a total low is highly visible here. So all gains respective lower losses there are due to migration to the bigger cities and univiersity towns/cities and their suburbia (maybe except for the Northern Pomerania district).

[Franknburger]

Asides, the more I look at the AfD map, the more I think that they have been able to especially take over small-scale tourism operators from the FDP. If you are making your living from summer tourism along the Baltic Sea coast, you might be anything but unhappy about Greece and other Mediterranean countries possibly leaving the Eurozone. In Saxony-Anhalt, OTOH, summer tourism hardly plays a role.

Wouldn't a devalued drachma (or lira or peseta, not that that's likely) make its country cheaper for Germans?

Cheaper, yes, but also more troublesome. No direct price comparison in Euro anymore, costs for currency exchange, etc.. Most German seniors, plus middle-aged East Germans, don't have much of foreign language skills (aside from Russian  in East Germany)- a reason why they preferred German-speaking holiday destinations. There are the myths of being cheated or having your car stolen in Southern Europe, which you have especially circulating in German lower-to middle class holiday resorts. I am not speaking of organised PR here, just about tourists coming there, and their hosts, reinforcing common stereotypes. I guess you could find similar patterns in some British, French or US holiday resorts.

As for the Green parties vs. the Social Democratic parties, I didn't necessarily assume there was a direct, explicit connection between their development; it just seemed to me (and it may have been an incorrect supposition) that in the last 15 years or so in many European countries, the Green vote has increased by quite a lot and the Soc Dem vote has decreased by quite a lot. Given some shared values, I thought it seemed possible the Greens had soaked up some of those dissatisfied voters on the left.

The Greens have mostly benefitted from the increase in university-educated people, and growth of the service sector. Both factors lead to large cities and university towns becoming their strongholds, before their clientele started dispersing into the sub- and exurbs by the turn of the millennium.
Demographically, the German Greens primarily cut into what would otherwise have been FDP voters, more specifically the social-liberal wing of the FDP, which ruled together with the SPD from 1969 to 1982. European countries in which the "Liberal Party"(in the European sense) has remained centrist have seen these parties growing - this concerns especially Scandinavia, to some extent also the UK. Where there never was a strong "Liberal Party" (e.g. France), or it shifted to the right (Germany, Austria), the Greens benefitted. Spain and Italy will be interesting to watch in this respect - M5S in Italy, e.g., appears to demographically, though not yet politically, assume the role of the academics & service sectors party.

[Franknburger]

Change in size of electorate, 2009-2013.

Using Al's basemap and shades from his key.



The loss at Ludwigsburg (northwestern suburbs of Stuttgart) strikes me as bizarre. Quite possibly an error in the official data.

Compare to the map below, originally posted here
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=169141.25

For reference, here a map of population changes between Dec 31, 2009 and Dec 31, 2011 (official data, most recent availability).



Top 5 population growth cities (by growth rate): Münster,  Darmstadt, Munich, Offenbach, Freiburg.
Leipzig and Dresden rank tenth and eleventh, respectively.

Ludwigsburg county is among the growing counties. However, that growth may well take part in the northern half of the county (Neckar-Zaber constituency), where according to Al's map registered voters have grown considerably. The town of Ludwigsburg, and some smaller towns directly north-west of Stuttgart (Geringen, Korntal, Ditzingen) are among the poshest and most expensive suburbs, and not the kind of places for young families and foreigners to move into, which makes population decrease due to over-aging quite possible.
Kornwestheim, between Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg town, OTOH, contains quite some social housing and former US army barracks. Since 2009, a Bosnian and a Turkish mosque have opened there. Another Turkish mosque is under construction in Hemmingen, some 15 km west of Ludwigsburg town.For an overview on local real estate prices, you may consult http://www.wohnungsboerse.net/immobilienpreise-Stuttgart/972. If you scroll down, you find a clickable map, which may open in a new window or not (with me, it sometimes worked, sometimes yielded a connection error).

Otherwise, let me draw your attention to the fact that, while most of local population change is induced by migration, one region, namely Catholic Cloppenburg-Vechta in the North-West, is still having natural population growth.

EDIT: Checked out the Ludwigsburg figures in detail - there is most likely a data error. In Ludwigsburg town, the number of eligible voters decreased by nearly 6,000, which is more than 10%. Actual voters went up by 2,476 (+6.0 %), resulting in 84.1% vote participation. The increase in actual voters is consistent with overall figures (the town's German population increased by some 2,000 people, the share of adults went up slightly as well). Based on Dec 31, 2012 German population, and assuming 83.5% adults, there should have been some 59,700 eligible voters in 2013 instead of 51,660 as per official statistics.

[buritobr]

1. Why did the sum SPD+Greens+Left loose more votes in the East than in the West from 2009 to 2013? Even the SPD gains were smaller in the East than in the West.

2. Why, even considering this defeat, are voters from East Germany more leftist than voters from other former communist countries?

[Yeahsayyeah]

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Mainly, personal popularity of Angela Merkel, shift of protest votes from the Left party to the AfD and the SPD lacking both a traditional voting pattern strength and a strong party organisation in the East (despite Brandenburg - and someone argued the pattern is even blurring, there).

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Are they really? in most postsocialist countries there has been at least one "left" electoral win since 1990, maybe despite the Baltic states, but there"communism" was aligned with Russian domination, so it is no surprise.

As East Germany is concerned: The economic promises of the German reunification turned out as empty. On the contrary it was followed by total economic collapse and deindustrialization (part of it was, that the Western German decision makers had no clue how to deal with the biggest problems of the East German economy (lack of capital owned by the companies themselfes to invest and a need for investments to modernize them). So they just privatized them for symbolic values and they got shut down for the Western companies who bought them did neither want more competition nor to expand that much (there had been overproduction in West Germany before 1990).
Due to that and reasons of political culture a large part of the electorate got the impression during the 1990ies, that they are dominated by self righeous Westerners who even don't want to listen to their specific experiences and needs. And when that pattern was bound to blur a little bit, the agenda 2010 welfare state reforms (read: cuts) were imposed, that affected people in the East the most.

[Franknburger]

To set forth Yeahsayyeah's explanation: Economic transition and resulting deindustrialisation particularly affected East German professionals above 35-40 years. With unemployment already quite high and rising, they lacked basic skills (knowledge of English, computer literacy etc.) required to successfully compete on the German labour market. Having already settled down and founded a family, migrating to the West wasn't much of an option. Moreover, they often had become SED members at a rather young age - mostly not for political conviction, but in order to build networks and pursue their career aspirations.

These people (intelligent, educated, technocratic, older, settled) formed the natural base of the PDS/Linke, and also shaped the party programme - pragmatist interest representation for East Germany, and especially the losers of the unification process. At first sight, strong PDS/Linke vote in the East appears to be leftish. But in fact, the electoral base is moderate-centrist, conservative (back to the good old GDR times) in outlook, and more interested in short-term financial and social improvement than in radical change (they already had one radical change throwing their life plan in shatters).

That East German Linke core electorate is gradually dying away. Socio-demographically, they are not particularly attractive to younger protest voters, which accordingly are looking all over the place (NPD, AfD, Pirates, Die PARTEI) for vehicles to express their protest. Decreasing unemployment in the East (partly due to economic growth, mostly due to outmigration) is making the Linke agenda less relevant. Last but not least, traditional Linke voters have come to an age where pensions become more of an issue than labour market / social security, and the CDU, as traditional pensioners' party, has something to offer to them.

Finally, you have to consider migration flows. West Berlin could not develop suburbs before 1990. In the 1990s, there were still a number of issues in the  Berlin periphery (poor infrastructure, "Eastern" school teachers, etc.) keeping young families from settling there. So, suburbanisation has only started recently, but strongly, and focusing mostly on the (traditionally sparsely populated) western Berlin periphery. What appears to be a rightward swing in Brandenburg is in fact the (western) Berlin periphery approaching typical suburban voting patterns as you find around Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, or Cologne.
Similarly, the few East German growth poles (Dresden, Leipzig, Erfurt, Jena) are attracting young academics, also from the West, and are consequently "greening". The Green's national decline didn't leave them unaffected, but their loss in East German cities tended to be smaller than in the West (e.g. -2.0 in Leipzig I, -1,9 in Erfurt-Weimar, -1.2 in Jena-Gera). Moreover, Green->Linke movement was far less pronounced in the East. Instead, the Pirates benefitted over proportion. Aside from their traditional Berlin inner city strongholds, the Pirate's best results were in Dresden II (4.5), Frankfurt/Oder (3.8 ), and Erfurt-Weimar (3.7). 

[minionofmidas]

[minionofmidas]

Full recount in Essen South after the routine checking of precincts with obvious irregularities etc flipped the result.

Not that it matters one jot which of the two is elected directly and which via list...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It does mean a very minor edit is needed on some maps though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

New map is pretty.

Am currently mucking around with a new Frankfurt base map that I may or may not use...

[Franknburger]

As concerns the regional pattern of CDU voting, I have already pointed at Catholicism (post #1733 some 5 pages back). A second core CDU voting group is displaced persons from pre WW II German territories in the East (decreasing for demographic reasons, but still relevant). These displaced persons have initially settled down as soon as they reached "safe" territory, i.e. directly west of the Iron curtain. The strongest  concentrations are
a.)  Eastern Holstein (refugees from East Prussia / East Pomerania arriving by boat via the Baltic Sea), subsequently often moving on to Hamburg and settling in the Hamburg periphery;
b.) North-eastern Lower Saxony, and in particular the Celle-Uelzen area (the 8-shaped blue-ish consitutency north-east of Hannover). Celle-Uelzen has been a traditional NPD stronghold back in the 1970s, and is one of the stronger AfD constituencies in the West.
c.) North-Eastern Bavaria (especially displaced persons from the Czech Republic), where refugees diluted the area's traditional protestant character.

It might make sense to point at another target area for displaced persons, namely Thuringia. Originally occupied by American forces, and as such considered to be "safe", it was in late 1945 exchanged for West Berlin, leaving displaced persons there under Russian control. This could have instilled some sense of being abandoned by the West, and might explain the CDU slightly under-performing in the state. [I know, I am getting speculative here, discontent with the grand coalition ruling the state is an equally plausible explanation].

ADDENDUM: I have just realised that these two characteristics, refugees and religion, also serve well to explain AfD voting in the West. In Schleswig-Holstein and northern Lower Saxony, the AfD map is pretty well mirroring the concentration of post WW II displaced persons. Elsewhere, AfD shares tend to be strongest in rural/ small-town protestant areas (the AfD belt east of the Rhine from south of Hagen towards Pforzheim and Calw, but also Northern Hesse and Northern Würtemberg) - traditional FDP, more recently also partly Green territory.

ADDENDUM II: While I am at it, let me point at another CDU core constituency which isn't that relevant nationally, but plays a role in some regions (Hessen, Berlin/Brandenburg, Hamburg/Holstein), namely Huguenots. Looks paradox at first sight - why should protestant immigrants associate with a potentially xenophobe, Catholic party? However, in their German protestant diaspora, Huguenots faced similar acceptance problems with mainstream (Lutheran) local protestants as did Flemish/Polish/Silesian Catholics and, btw, also Dutch Mennonites. So, allying with them was a logical development. Politicians like Bouffier (Hessen PM), de Maiziere (German Minister of Defence) or Chapeaurouge (CDU vice president of the Hamburg state parliament from 1966 to 1983) signify the Huguenot role and weight inside the CDU.

[RogueBeaver]

Steinbruck is leaving politics.

[Yeahsayyeah]

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I found a table with numbers (1950). http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimatvertriebene#Verteilung in Deutschland

Displaced persons and refugees or resettlers (Umsiedler) as they were called officially made up a smaller part of a population by then than in Brandenburg and Sachsen-Anhalt. But to be fair it seems to have been quite evenly distributed by Länder at this point of time with the exception of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (45%) and Saxony (14% - which strikes me as odd, maybe the level of urbanization plays a role here).

But migration to the West (as a mass phenomenon) did not end in 1950 but in 1961, when about two and a half million people had left the GDR. Many of those should have been displaced persons/refugees who had no strong ties to the place they had been settling down at first.

Furthermore, I would doubt that the pattern of displaced persons voting CDU is as strong in the East as it is in the West, where it was a result of the possibility of articulation both their special interests and their revanchist wet dreams and of a merger of their special interest party with the CDU/CSU.

In the Soviet occupation zone the economic needs at least of those displaced persons with an agricultural background were adressed very early with the land reform. Big industrial projects in the heavy industry and the energy sector (coal) also did largely rely on their workforce. So it is possible that many of the resettler who had stayed were actually more reliable towards the GDR administration, because their economic prospects were to some extent alligned with its policies. But no I am the one who is speculating. This seems to coincide with the relative electoral strength of the PDS in the GDR elections of 1990 (and onwards) in the middle and northern parts of the east, though (I am preparing some maps for that, because I have found data for the Kreis level, recently, and we do not have a thread for this, yet), a pattern I was wondering about.

If you combine CDU and DSU strength Thuringia was very similar to Saxony in 1990, but the Thuringian state CDU has been shook by many scandals all through the nineties and the state SPD and PDS/Linke have not been that flawed and anemic as in Saxony, so a more plural and vital political culture developed. So this may be it. Red-red-green would have been able to form a coalition there in 2009 when it was not for the SPD's move to deny the Left the post of a prime minister at all cost.

[minionofmidas]

Within the GDR 1950-1990, you get a population pattern (in the midst of general decline) of the cities growing - from a 1945 low caused by destruction, of course, and with a much slower recovery than in the west, but also not ending and turning around radically as here in the 60s/70s - and of the north holding up better than the south. (And of course the GDR newtowns: Neubrandenburg, Schwedt, Eisenhüttenstadt, Hoyerswerda, Suhl...) Which also means that the rural/smalltown population collapse in Saxony and Thuringia began long before 1990.

[minionofmidas]

A note on why the lowest shade is labelled 17.5 -
the colors were nicked from Al's SPD strength and CxU strength maps, which had 9 shades each. The four CxU > 70 figures are all below 72.5 (Rottal-Inn is highest at 72.1). Of those four Berlin districts below 30, however, the two East Berlin districts are over 27.5, Mitte is at 26.9, andFriedrichshain-Kreuzberg is of course crazy awesome and at 18.0. I didn't feel like creating two extra shades of red, let alone four two of which wouldn't be used.

[minionofmidas]

There will be coalition talks between SPD and CDU/CSU, but the whole SPD membership will take a vote on the coalition treaty. Had that been done in 2005, it might well have failed given the massive double whammy of the sales tax increase and the pension age increase.
This is a victory for the left wing: Talk with the CDU yes (some on the Left don't even want that - but mostly because they fear the outcome, especially if the current troika does all the talking and they aren't actually involved in the negotiations. Also, of course, hoping for Green treason), but no Regieren als Selbstzweck. And one troika head to roll, this is also important. (Though most people would have preferred Steinmeier to go.)


Checking over the Left's performance in Frankfurt by neighborhood. The trad Green strongholds really stand out, the Left only barely went back on 2009 there. That's Black-Green at the city level for you (but a really dreadful Black-Green that's really a bourgeois, rightwing city government - oh, of course it's a more 'modern' right than you'd get in Bavaria but the point is that the Green city council party is virtually cleansed of anyone but hyper-"Realo" careerists and they actually like to govern with the CDU.)

[Middle-aged Europe]

As for the Green party... the new chairmanship will apparently consist of incumbent party leader Cem Özdemir und Simone Peter, the former environment minister of the Saarland.

As for the parliamentary Greens... while Toni Hofreiter is set to become the male/left-wing co-leader, there's gonna be a showdown for the female/right-wing spot between former top candidate Katrin Göring-Eckardt and one of the current deputy leaders, Kerstin Andreae, on October 8.

Andreae is seen as the more right-wing of the two, which means it is harder for her to get the support of the left-wing MPs in the Green parliamentary group. On the other hand, the blame for the mediocre election result is generally also layed on Göring-Eckardt.

[windjammer]

http://www.n-tv.de/politik/Al-Wazir-sendet-schwarz-gruene-Signale-article11450996.html

A CDU-Grün majority could be possible in Hessen.

[minionofmidas]

Despite the large number of >60% municipalities around Fulda, none is over 65%.

[minionofmidas]

Asides, the more I look at the AfD map, the more I think that they have been able to especially take over small-scale tourism operators from the FDP. If you are making your living from summer tourism along the Baltic Sea coast, you might be anything but unhappy about Greece and other Mediterranean countries possibly leaving the Eurozone. In Saxony-Anhalt, OTOH, summer tourism hardly plays a role.

Something wrong with that theory:
http://www.statistik-hessen.de/b2013/S6350222.htm

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Fulda is not like everywhere else, is it. Is the hyper CDU area just east of Marburg also a Catholic enclave?

Also, randomly, is the difference between the former Free State of Waldeck and the rest of the north a 'new' thing that happens to echo ancient voting patterns, or a lasting ghost of those ancient voting patterns?