- cross-posted to:
- map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz
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Reuters has an interactive map where you can see the percentages for each district
Shows a bit more of a positive view in the sense if your looking at this as an American and think AFD got a majority in all east Germany, they didn’t, the bluest areas are 40-44% percent while most are at around the 32-36%, but they got the plurality. A bit depressing though in that all of west Germany they’re taking 15-20% which this map doesn’t show well
If you’re wondering what the AfD districts in the West were: Gelsenkirchen in the north and Kaiserslautern in the south.
The most notable thing in Kaiserslautern is Ramstein air base and friends. I guess the military votes far-right.
I have no idea what’s up with Gelsenkirchen. SPD came second with CDU just behind, so maybe it’s what would be vote splitting in a dumber electoral system. As it is, the map is just a map.
You can find an interactive version here.
It looks dramatic, but afaik the old GDR states have much lower pop and density. Unless germany starts some funny business with electors and whatnot, i daresay this is not that bad of a result.
It is so striking where AfD is popular thought.
A long time ago I visited one of my parents’ friends in East Germany with them, and I said something about how it was good that Germany reunified after the wall fell.
My parent’s friend said, people here don’t think it was a good thing. People here felt like they lost the war.
I never realized that was a thing.
Any chance that NATO skepticism is a big issue in East Germany, and the actual appeal of AfD?
When you grow up in west Germany, you kinda never realize that the GDR was basically annexed by west Germany.
The majority of people in the GDR actually didn’t want to turn capitalist, but they rather wanted another, more liberal form of socialism. Also, the Treuhand basically destroyed the east German industry which was then bought up by the West.
So, actually the “finally reunited” narrative is the one that’s overly romantic, not (only) nostalgia for the GDR.
That all makes sense.
Another “story” I’ve heard is that the East German factories were basically years behind in safety and efficiency and environment harm, and so a lot of them were shuttered after unification. Was this the Treuhand?
The job of the Treuhand was it to check if a business were able to survive the transition to capitalism; most weren’t so they were closed. The problem is that many people in the GDR believe that they were scammed by the west, when in reality they were scammed by their own government for decades.
They were scammed. The exchange rate of the Ostmark to the DMark was great for consumption, but made etern businesses unsustainable. They were then bought up by sleazy investors for a pittance.
You can say about political liberties in the GDR what you want, but domestic production was actually really good over there.
On top of that, East Germany didn’t get the investment they were promised after unification. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the people who didn’t live under Neoliberalism 40 years ago are rejecting it today.
Interesting, indeed. Maybe it’s a form of nostalgia? We still have plenty of people missing the comunists in my country, usually folk that had it better during the regime. But I never heard “we felt like we lost the war”.
Downvote me more please.
You can’t display a map like this on map enthusiasts that gives a false representation of the election based on land area instead of population density and not be called out on it. It’s a shit way to represent data and sows more discord than gives the proper story of what happened
Hmm, that’s true.
Actually, if this wasn’t a map community I’d be more worried. In theory people here will know maps hide heterogeneity.
I think the Elsson here is that east Germany is still very much a Russian subject tbh
Please note that in Germany you get 2 votes in the federal election. 1st is for a candidate to directly represent your district, 2nd is for a party nation wide. The map only shows the election result for the 2nd vote.
Here’s another map to show the party affiliation of winners of the 1st vote:
Colors are the same, except blue. Blue represents CSU, essentially the Bavarian version of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union).
For anyone interested in psephology or electoral systems, the system Germany uses is called Mixed-Member Proportional. It mixes the benefits of FPTP (having a local member who is your local area’s most liked candidate) with proportional systems (having the overall Bundestag proportionally representing the will of the people).
It’s the one people talk about most for a new Canadian system, but honestly it just seems unnecessarily complicated to me. It’s a minority that can even name their representative.
Thanks for the new word, I like it!
You caneven see the big University cities in Germany: cologne, Münster, Aachen.
I’m shocked AFD is eastern
Taking the ex-communist countries as a whole, my impression is that forced social progress gets in the way of real social progress. Add the shitty economy on top of that, and you have fertile ground for fascists.
I’m not. Populism thrives when people are dissatisfied and angry. East Germany is economically not as strong as the west, despite decades of reunion.
Sounds like it’s following in America’s footsteps, where rural and rust belt regions were kinda left behind by the federal government. The south is more complex but similar.
As a mexican… U right and u right
Soviet brain damage lingers on.
Many East Germans long for the DDR. It’s not surprising they vote for a party that wants to undermine democracy.
I read a long time ago that the divide was quire real in germany, the esteners had bad education (thank you Soviet Union) and were generally way poorer than the rich west germans, which lead to all kind of problems and the east germans felt like slave workers for the rich BMW drivers.
I don’t know how much that played a role in the election but I sure think it’s a breeding ground for a populistic party …
Unfortunately capitalism completely exploited the remains of the DDR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treuhandanstalt
“Bad education”? WTF are you talking about? The east experienced a full-on brain-drain after the borders were dissolved and the people who stayed got screwed by the Treuhand.
You’re talking about scientists I guess, I was referring to the global population that learned state planned economy and russian instead of English for example.
But I’m not here to lecture anyone, thanks for the feedback.
… so you’re saying that learning russian, instead of english makes you dumb? O.o
And don’t get me started on economic education. If I’d judge the intellect of a person based on their understanding of economy, then I’d never stop to wonder how so many people were able to put their pants on in the morning.
Sad to see 1/3 of german voted for nazi in both local and federal vote.
20% is 1/5. It is still too much but not the end. 80% did not vote for them. And the left go stronger too and keeps growing. This is the beginn of the fight, not the end.
It’s funny to see Berlin, a Linke haven, lost in a huge sea of nazis.
“Extremes” both sides, ie. the Nazis and the Left party, are more popular in the east, no doubt because it is poorer, so people are less satisfied with the status quo.
It looks like it’s just West-Berlin + a suburb of West-Berlin, while the rest of old East-Germany went fascist.
Edit: I had misread the map when I made the above comment. The CDU in West-Berlin are not the only non fascists, East-Berlin has not gone fascist, but mostly went for Die Linke.
CDU is not fascist, it’s center left.
Edit: I meant center right. Still, not fascist.
I think you meant center right
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Union_of_Germany
SPD is center left
Oops yes I meant that.
?
I said East-Germany went fascist. On the map CDU rules the roost in West-Germany and west-berlin, so I never said that I consider CDU to be fascist.
I thought you meant the rest of Berlin went fascist too?
Sorry, I apparently had misread the map, I thought east-berlin had mostly gone afd as well. The color of Die Linke had blended in with the color of afd, so it had seemed like it was just an island of black colored west-berlin in a sea of afd.
And yes, I’m partially color blind, which isn’t an excuse, but might explain it a little.
The eastern most district did go fascist, but that’s not surprising.
Können wir bitte die Mauer wieder aufbauen?
Um jede Großstadt, die nicht schwarz oder blau ist?
“The planet is fine - the people are fucked.” George Carlin
So, will the German Nazis use the same playbook as the American ones and claim that the election was rigged?
Election denial is less scary if they only have 20% support. If they tried it I imagine the vote to ban them would come back and maybe get enough support this time.
Unlikely, they’re happy with their result.
It’s however possible that the conservatives will run the Austrian playbook. Talks with the social democrats fail, “we have a responsibility to Germany to form a government”, then make a coalition with the AfD (Nazis).
Back to your original question: the BSW will likely contest the elections, as they have missed the 5% threshold by only ~14k votes and there are evident irregularities. For example, many Germans living abroad, for example those living in the US, had almost no chance to cast their vote.
then make a coalition with the AfD (Nazis).
It only adds up to 48%. The other parties would band together to make 52%.
Talks with the social democrats fail, “we have a responsibility to Germany to form a government”, then make a coalition with the AfD (Nazis).
That feels familiar somehow.
There’s the 1/5 AfD and 1/4 Union. Maybe the westies start to take the socio economic discrepancies between them and their eastern counterparts serious.
Iron curtain still alive.
Based Aachen! 💚
Can any Germans tell me what the deal is with the Left? It looks like the only seats they’re winning are in areas you’d think of as AfD areas. Is it just a matter of the poorer more overlooked areas becoming polarised? Or are the German Left kinda tankish?
Here’s an interactive map so you can see the percentages better. They are only winning the eastern cities with 21-25% while in the western cities they’re getting 12-15% , so it’s not like there killing it in Berlin and doing nothing in hamburg. If you compare it to 2021, they’ve made just as much gains in the western cities as they did in the east.
I’d say it’s more about the poorer areas wanting a change either with the afd or linke/bsw. Most of the tankie elements of der linke have signed onto the bsw, so pining for the good old days of the gdr isn’t really their selling point anymore. Unless you were just pining for the higher social security and not the authoritarian state or russian domination, which is a lot of people in the east. This split is also part of the reason for their gains in the West as more left leaning people who are hesitant to be associated with the old school communist now have a party.
I don’t see what you mean. The Left party’s tankie elements split off into the BSW a couple of years back, and the only seats the party picked up are in major urban centres that you’d usually expect to skew left. The reason most of them are in the East is probably historical.
I don’t see what you mean
What I mean is that they’re in Leipzig and East Berlin, not Hamburg or Frankfurt or Munich, or even West Berlin. So I was wondering why it would be that they only seem to be having success in former East Germany, which is very similar to AfD. I was wondering if any Germans had an understanding of why that might be, and perhaps if there are lessons that leftist parties elsewhere could take from that.
Not a German, but I’ll try to answer:
The Left = Die Linke = commies, that have in the past been supportive of authoritarians like Chavez, Maduro, Putin, … So kinda tankies yes.
Spd = social democratic party of Germany. The actual moderate left party. Many consider them to have moved too much to the right economically, which has opened room for Die Linke to grow. Especially Schröder was a disaster when he was chancellor around 25 years ago (+ afterwards as well when he became a stooge for Putin). The exiting chancellor & leader of exiting coalition government is also from SPD. Apart from their ridiculous levels of support for Israel, I can’t think of any stand out bad things that they did. An actual German will have to fill us in on that.Die Linke are nowhere close to tankies, what are you even talking about. They are a center left party.
Centre left, as in to the right of the Greens?
I’m just trying to figure out why it might be that Linke and AfD seem more or less to share areas, while the Union, SPD, and Greens take the rest. Why Linke and not Green, for example?
The Linke is an Eastern German party.
After reunification, the Eastern German ruling party SED evolved into PDS. In 2005, PDS and the left-wing of the SPD formed Die Linke.
Because of this, Die Linke is more popular in the East. They are seen as anti-establishment and have regularly brought attention to issues Eastern Germany faced, so they are more popular there.
Vice versa, they aren’t nearly as established in the West as the other parties.
Die Linke are not even close to tankies. There certainly are some in the mix, just like we have them here, but equating Linke to tankies is quite disingenuous
I specifically remember that Die Linke supported Chavez and Maduro when they were already full on authoritarian. I conflate support for authoritarian regimes with being tankies/fascists.
This was years ago, so it’s possible that I’m out of date.
