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

[buritobr]

Since Germany doesn't have a "winner takes all" rule like the Electoral College in the US, the winning parties in the states doesn't matter too much, but it is interesting to see which party had the plurality of the Zweitstimme in the federal elections.

1949
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony
CSU: Bavaria

1953
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Lowe Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse
CSU: Bavaria

1957
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Lowe Saxony, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg
CSU: Bavaria

1961
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Lowe Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse
CSU: Bavaria

1965
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Lowe Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse
CSU: Bavaria

1969
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony,  Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia
CSU: Bavaria

1972
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein
CSU: Bavaria

1976
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia,  Schleswig-Holstein
CSU: Bavaria

1980
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, , Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein
CSU: Bavaria

1983
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Lowe Saxony, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg
CSU: Bavaria

1987
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Lowe Saxony, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland
CSU: Bavaria

1990
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Brandenburg, Lowe Saxony, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland
CSU: Bavaria

1994
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Lowe Saxony, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia
SPD: Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland
CSU: Bavaria

1998
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Saxony
SPD: Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lowe Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,  North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia
CSU: Bavaria

2002
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony
SPD: Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lowe Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,  North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia
CSU: Bavaria

2005
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony
SPD: Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lowe Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,  North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia
CSU: Bavaria

2009
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Lowe Saxony, Hamburg, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, , Saarland, Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia
SPD: Bremen
CSU: Bavaria
Linke: Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt

2013
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Brandenburg, Lowe Saxony, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia,
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia
SPD: Bremen, Hamburg
CSU: Bavaria

2017
CDU: Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Brandenburg, Lowe Saxony, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia
SPD: Bremen
CSU: Bavaria
AfD: Saxony


Observations
Unlike the USA since 1992, there are few states in Germany which always vote for the same party. If a party can have a good national margin, this party wins the majority of the states.
The few safe states are the conservative states in the south and the social democratic city-states. The CSU always won Bavaria, the CDU always won Baden-Württemberg, the SPD always won Bremen, the CDU won Hamburg for the first time only in 2009. The CDU can win Berlin because the left-wing vote is split between SPD and Linke. Bremen is the unique state in Germany the CDU never won... and Bavaria too.
The Linke and AfD have already won states in the East. The FDP and the Greens never won states. In early 2021, we could think that th Greens would win in at least one state this year. But not...
In the US, the map ever repeated. In Germany, 1957 and 1983 had the same map. 2002 and 2005 too.

[CumbrianLefty]

Thank you for this

[Silent Hunter]

What about (West) Berlin before 1990?

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

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.

[Middle-aged Europe]

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.

[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.

[buritobr]

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.

[Middle-aged Europe]

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).

[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.

[palandio]

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.

Contralily to what many would expect the Ruhr area as a whole (by which I mean Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen and surrounding areas, but not e.g. Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, M'gladbach) had never been an SPD stronghold before the 60s. Many Catholics voted for the Center Party (some even for its remnants that hadn't merged into the CDU after 1945). The middle classes voted mostly right of center. Among the working class, particularly the Protestant parts of it, the SPD had some strength, but the KPD as well (among both Protestant and Catholic workers).

Cologne and surrounding areas in the Rhineland were politically heavily influenced by their Catholicism, more than e.g. Munich which was not a BVP and CSU stronghold and on the local level never has been since. Issues like confessionally segregated schooling were much more important in a confessionally mixed area like NRW than in Bavaria.

NRW becoming a "Red" state in the 60s can in my opinion to a minor degree be attributed by the waning of the Adenauer effect in Cologne and surroundings (not so much in the Ruhr). The most important factor in my opinion is that industrial politics began to supercede confessional voting among Catholic working class voters. Coal mining in the Ruhr went into a structural crisis already in the 60s. This led to the consolidation of the (previously privately owned) majority of mines into the parastatal Ruhrkohle AG. Also the SPD began to make some inroads with middle class voters.

The rural and small-town parts of NRW either had already been "Red" since at least 1949 or remained "Black" for the whole time.

[Hnv1]

do we have the strongest performance for each Land? did CSU ever break 70% in Bayern? CDU 60% in BW? SPD 60% in Bremen? etc.

[buritobr]

do we have the strongest performance for each Land? did CSU ever break 70% in Bayern? CDU 60% in BW? SPD 60% in Bremen? etc.

From 1949 to 1987, you can see all the results by state in the Wikipedia auf Deutsch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestagswahl_1949

From 1990 to 2017, after the reunification, you can see all the results by state in the Wikipedia in English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_German_federal_election

[Hnv1]

do we have the strongest performance for each Land? did CSU ever break 70% in Bayern? CDU 60% in BW? SPD 60% in Bremen? etc.

From 1949 to 1987, you can see all the results by state in the Wikipedia auf Deutsch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestagswahl_1949

From 1990 to 2017, after the reunification, you can see all the results by state in the Wikipedia in English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_German_federal_election

Interesting to see how strong the far-right\ex nazis were in lower Saxony in the first few years of the federal republic. why is that?

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's interesting that the SPD only seems to have won Rhineland-Palatinate in 1998 but it's had an SPD Minister-President for the last thirty years now.

[Astatine]

It's interesting that the SPD only seems to have won Rhineland-Palatinate in 1998 but it's had an SPD Minister-President for the last thirty years now.

Structurally, Rhineland-Palatinate is fertile ground for the Christian Democrats: High rural population, most of them Catholic, dependency on agriculture, only few larger cities...

In 1991, the SPD won RLP after the CDU had governed there since 1947, mostly because of some CDU scandals. Ever since, a major factor in the Social Democrats' success on statewide level has been the incumbency of their Minister-Presidents (Kurt Beck 1994-2013, Malu Dreyer since 2013), who are folksy, popular and are just great fits for the state.

The fact that RLP is "naturally" more conservative is very well depicted in statewide polling: Between 2011 and 2016 as well as between 2016 and 2021, the CDU was the leading the Social Democrats in most polls, at some point in time by double digits. They just always blew it in the final weeks of campaigning.

Another point why the CDU did exceptionally well there (and almost won the state in 1998 in spite of the party's poor performance nationwide): Helmut Kohl is from RLP, and was a (relatively) popular Minister-President there before becoming Leader of the CDU.

[buritobr]

Nordrhein-Westfalen in 1949
CDU 36.9%
SPD 31.4%
Zentrum 8.9%
FDP 8.6%
KPD 7.6% (only a little smaller than Linke 2009)

In 1949 there was an attempt to rebuild the Weimar Republic party system. There was the BP in Bavaria, which didn't perform much worse than the CSU and the SPD.
The 5% barrier destroyed everything in the following elections and Germany had a 3 party system before the 6 party system.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Interesting to see how strong the far-right\ex nazis were in lower Saxony in the first few years of the federal republic. why is that?

Rural Protestant voters of the sort who had preferred the old (discredited) conservative tradition and who had voted Nazi in large numbers in the early 30s. They took a while to be properly integrated into the new political order.

[buritobr]

2021
CDU: Baden-Württemberg
SPD: Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lowe Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein
CSU: Bavaria
AfD: Saxony, Thuringia