2013 Elections in Germany

[buritobr]

Thank you for the answers and sorry for my mistake.

The SPD had more votes than CDU/CSU in 2002 and not 2005

[Middle-aged Europe]

As for a more historical perspective, I think the CDU opted to take the "big tent party" route early on, while the SPD tended to remain the "workers' and labor unions' party" for some time. That left the SPD at a structural disadvantage which was never fully erased even after the SPD decided to become a "catch-all party" themselves IMO.

And between 1969 and 1998, the call who's supposed to be in charge was basically made by the FDP alone. From '69 to '82 the SPD governed Germany, although they weren't the strongest party for most of that time. Because the FDP decided to. Then in 1982, the FDP dumped the SPD in favour of the CDU. From thereon, the SPD didn't really have a chance to get their hands on the Chancellorship until a SPD-Green coalition finally emerged as a viable option on the federal level.

[minionofmidas]

The best way to  visualize the FDP collapse is just to do 2009 and 2013 maps of them using the same key.



The SPD. Not so very interesting:




But now look you here:



What a collapse in rural parts, with these voters clearly going mostly back to the SPD but some to the CDU as well. The Hessian Left of 2013 is an urban party.



And Frankfurt. Have a look at Frankfurt.

[minionofmidas]

Upcoming in this series: AfD in one point steps (because 2.5 scale means just three shades and almost all the map in two - though while the FDP one has six shades almost all the map is in two as well, of course), turnout, the pop. change and CDU vs Parliamentary Left maps as above, a CDU-SPD map to counterweigh that one's over redness, and a probably unshaded third place map because I feel like it.

[Franknburger]

And Frankfurt. Have a look at Frankfurt.

And Gießen (or is it Wetzkar). Otherwise pretty much back to 2005 levels, which means they weren't able to keep those 2009 Grand coalition-disappointed voters

.

Upcoming in this series: AfD in one point steps (because 2.5 scale means just three shades and almost all the map in two - though while the FDP one has six shades almost all the map is in two as well, of course).

I am currently working on Hanburg metro maps (a nightmare, as numbers have to be collected from some 10 different county pages, and then consolidated from electoral wards to communities). My AfD map has them in 2-point steps (there best communities here are above 15%). 

[minionofmidas]

Oh, I would assume there are *communities* well over 10% in Hesse as well... we just have a very different municipal structure.

And yes, that is Gießen. Wetzlar is the vaguely L-shaped one west of it.

Back to 2005 levels? You don't know just how right you are. The Green result in Hesse outside Frankfurt was 9.5% in both 2005 and 2013. (While Frankfurt fell 2.2 points. Put another way, Frankfurt went from providing 14.0% to providing 13.3% of the Greens' statewide votem while going from providing 8.6% to providing 9.1% of the statewide vote overall.)

[minionofmidas]

AfD in one point scale. Not sure how I overlooked Hesseneck when I looked over the remaining districts to check for any % results...

Anyways; weakness in Marburg is echoed in likely parts of Frankfurt. Suburban strength is of note. Rural pattern is ... weird. Though I do have a slightly wacky new hypothesis regarding the Dill Valley (which also has a history of low turnouts and a recent history of a fairly strong CDU shift) and the Hinterland (western Marburg-Biedenkopf / southwestern Waldeck-Frankenberg): Evangelicals?



Shaded winner map. How do we describe the SPD presence in Southern Hesse - "not quite wiped out yet"?

Also, let's play a game: Spot the northernmost Catholic enclave. (It's not easy.)

If that was too blue for you... fake Merkel majority versus fake Leftwing majority (aka CDU vote as percentage of all represented votes).



Just for fun: Third place map, unshaded.



The three pale municipalities are exact ties with the Greens. This would have been more interesting if the Green and Left vote distributions weren't correlated to an extent. Though the AfD belts and the random FDP outcrops are cool.

[minionofmidas]

Best and worst precincts in Hesse

Four parties had their best result in small villages forming their own precinct:

Brand (Hilders municipality, Fulda district) 137 valid day votes cast, CDU 118 or 86.1%
Markershausen (Herleshausen municipality, Werra-Meißner district) 29 valid day votes cast - one of the smallest precincts in the state - SPD 18 or 62.1%
Hüddingen (Bad Wildungen municipality, Waldeck-Frankenberg district) 50 valid day votes cast, FDP 13 or 26.0%
Reichlos (Freiensteinau municipality, Vogelsberg district) 80 valid day votes cast, AfD 19 or 23.8%

Fittingly for a party that bled voters during the campaign, the Greens' two best precincts were postal precincts in Marburg (postal precinct 1, 303 out of 922 valid votes or 33.2%) and Darmstadt. The best day vote precinct was in Kassel's Inner West (pin on polling location) - 184 out of 594 valid votes, 31.0%.

The Left's was also in Kassel, in the North Town (pin on polling location again). That area has a lot of industry and a huge migrant population... and Kassel university. 129 out of 543 valid votes, 23.8%. Which meant second place not far behind the SPD, five votes ahead of the Greens.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the same precinct also provides the CDU's worst result: 47 votes, 8.7%, in fourth place but just three votes ahead of the Pirates.

There is no single weakest result for the smaller parties: The Greens polled zero votes in 19 precincts across the state, the FDP and the Left in 36 each, the AfD in 69 (including three postal precincts. Two of which served an entire municipality.)

Last not least, because most hilarious: the SPD.

Gebersdorf is not where you'd have expected the SPD's weakest result to come from. It's in Frielendorf municipality in Schwalm-Eder district (eh... at least it's not in a municipality that the SPD won.) It had only 39 valid day votes cast, but these are hilarious:

CDU 17
Greens 5
Left 5
NPD 3
SPD 2 (5.1%)
FDP 2
FW 2
AfD 1
Pirates 1
PARTEI 1

[palandio]

Do all municipalities in Hesse have CDU or SPD in second place?
In Bavaria there is quite a number of municipalities where the SPD is in third (or fourth) place. On the other hand there are not many municipalities that were won by the SPD. One example:

Stadlern, Kreis Schwandorf
voting age pop. 445
voters 250 (56.18%)
valid PR votes 247
SPD 96, 38.87%
CSU 94, 38.06%
LINKE 16, 6.48%
NPD 9, 3.64%
FW 8, 3.24%
GRÜNE 7, 2.83%
AfD 6, 2.43%
BP 4, 1.62%
REP 3, 1.21%
ÖDP 2, 0.81%
PIRATEN 1, 0.40%
FDP 1, 0.40%

The city of Teublitz (Kreis Schwandorf) on the other hand which was one of two (!) municipalities in Bavaria that went for the SPD in 2009 was won by the CSU 39.79% vs. 35.65%.

Maybe I will find another municipality not won by the CSU.

[minionofmidas]

Do all municipalities in Hesse have CDU or SPD in second place?

This year, yes. The FDP came second across much of CDU country - not just in the Taunus but around Fulda as well - in 2009.

(Stadlern had a Cornberglike Left result in 2009. And apparently a Cornberglike Left collapse this year.)


Re: "spot the northernmost Catholic enclave"... I was forgetting the actual northernmost Catholic enclave, which is essentially impossible to spot. So, second northernmost please.

[palandio]

I still don't understand the phenomenon of 2009 one-time Left voters in places like Cornberg, Stadlern, St. Oswald-Riedlhütte etc.

Where did they come from? Where did they go?
SPD? CDU/CSU? Minor parties (FW, REP, etc.)? Abstention?

Why did they vote Left in 2009?
Economic crisis and resulting lay-offs/short-hours in some industries?

What explains these massive swings?

[minionofmidas]

Not all of them one time - Cornberg was the Left's best result in 2005 as well.
Of the three villages the municipality is made up of, the largest (which it's named for) was a planned settlement, planned by the Nazis, but more importantly collecting miners who had until then been living in the villages all around (where their ancestors had been farmers, and some of their brothers still were). Kupferschiefer* miners - that stuff is poisonous.
Granted, the last pit (in the area and in the Free World west of the iron curtain) closed in 1965. But it's not surprising such a place should be very SPD voting... or that the Left should have had appeal there.

*literally "copperslate", but it's not slate, just looks rather like it. It's a stone with a lot of copper ore in it, though.

[palandio]

The fact that these places have a large SPD and Left potential doesn't surprise me so much. They all have a certain mining and/or industrial tradition.
(Interesting facts about Cornberg though.)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is the northernmost Catholic enclave the light-ish blue area on the border with Thuringia? in Werra-Meißner? Guessing that because the part of Thuringia it borders is, of course, a rather large Catholic enclave.

(Frankfurt stadtteile maps up tomorrow)

[minionofmidas]

Is the northernmost Catholic enclave the light-ish blue area on the border with Thuringia? in Werra-Meißner? Guessing that because the part of Thuringia it borders is, of course, a rather large Catholic enclave.

No... but you're far enough north.

[palandio]

The northernmost Catholic enclave is a little Stadt that until 1802 was part of the Duchy of Westphalia and hence Catholic like the rest of this state (cuius regio, eius religio). In the Napoleonic Era the town changed its ruler several times (not voluntarily, of course). In 1817 Prussia, which had got the ex-Duchy of Westphalia in 1814, ceded the little town to the Electorate of Hesse, until in 1866 Prussia annexed the whole Electorate of Hesse.
Some neighboring villages belonged to Waldeck, which was (by its rulers) Protestant, others belonged to the Electorate of Hesse. But from the Napoleonic era on rulers did not force their subjects to change religion anymore, so the town remained Catholic.

[minionofmidas]

The northernmost Catholic enclave is a little Stadt that until 1802 was part of the Duchy of Westphalia and hence Catholic like the rest of this state (cuius regio, eius religio). In the Napoleonic Era the town changed its ruler several times (not voluntarily, of course). In 1817 Prussia, which had got the ex-Duchy of Westphalia in 1814, ceded the little town to the Electorate of Hesse, until in 1866 Prussia annexed the whole Electorate of Hesse.
Some neighboring villages belonged to Waldeck, which was (by its rulers) Protestant, others belonged to the Electorate of Hesse. But from the Napoleonic era on rulers did not force their subjects to change religion anymore, so the town remained Catholic.

This is correct - that is the enclave that is impossible to spot on these maps. Though Volkmarsen (the name of the town) is reasonably dominant to the municipality that now bears its name, and that municipality voted for the CDU, the problem is that it was annexed to Waldeck-Frankenberg district in the 70s reform (some of the Protestant villages annexed to Volkmarsen are historically in Waldeck). Given the results there, it doesn't stand out. The relatively dark place at the northeast of Waldeck on the AfD map.

The town of Fritzlar and some of the surrounding villages formed a not-quite-continuous enclave of Mainz until 1802, now the bulk of the Fritzlar and Naumburg municipalities. Naumburg is the southwesternmost municipality in Kassel district and Fritzlar is south of that and in light blue on the four party map.

Both well visible here (this is a pre-reformation map; Hersfeld would not remain part of a clerical territory much longer):

[minionofmidas]

Turnout.



Three grey places are exactly unchanged. Much of this is much as expected, and some is not.

I note that a number of small regional centres, places like Eschwege, Hersfeld, Erbach etc, stand out with slower decline than their surrounds and with low turnout.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Frankfurt. Use the arcane magick of right-click to discover a bigger version of the very same map.

Might be some minor errors in places for various reasons.

[Sec. of State Superique]

I feel sorry for the FDP =(

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Why? They had it coming.

[Franzl]

Why? They had it coming.

Indeed they did, although I was surprised we actually managed to do it. Pity they survived at state level here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For every silver lining, a cloud.

(hope things are at least mostly good for you, btw)

[Peter the Lefty]

So the coalition talks with the SPD have begun, and apparently they (the SPD) are willing to compromise on tax hikes.  If the talks fail, the Greens are waiting in the wings.

Just why, exactly, does Merkel need a coalition partner?  Is the idea of a minority government that scary for Germans?

[Middle-aged Europe]

Just why, exactly, does Merkel need a coalition partner?  Is the idea of a minority government that scary for Germans?

Political culture, mostly. If you're not part of the governing coalition, then you're part of the opposition. And if you're part of the opposition your job is to push and if possible to bring down the governing coalition. There's no in-between. That's what every German politician is taught from the time he or she joined their respective political party.