{"id":3828,"date":"2013-09-25T00:01:40","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T00:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.viewsoftheworld.net\/?p=3828"},"modified":"2017-01-19T15:12:40","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T15:12:40","slug":"bundestagswahl-2013-electoral-maps-of-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.viewsoftheworld.net\/?p=3828","title":{"rendered":"Bundestagswahl 2013: Electoral maps of Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

Germany’s vote at this year’s general election has implications that reach much further than its national borders. CDU, the party of chancellor Merkel, could secure a massive victory getting 34.1% of the second vote share, though it narrowly missed an absolute majority of seats with its sister party CSU who won 7.4% of the votes (they are only standing in the Federal state of Bavaria). The former coalition partner FDP however missed the 5% mark (4.8%) that is needed to enter parliament, so that CDU\/CSU now have to find a new coalition partner. Second largest party became that of Merkel’s contender Steinbrueck. SPD could secure 25.7% of the second votes. The only two other parties in parliament are Die Linke (The Left) with 8.6% of votes, and Die Gruenen (the Green Party) with 8.4%.
\nAs often the case with electoral maps, the problem with conventional map depictions (as shown in the little thumbnail maps below) is the distorted perspective of the less populated areas. The maps shown in most of the media give the impression of an almost landslide victory of CDU\/CSU. But while their good results are undisputable, the conservative CDU is traditionally strong in the rural regions, while SPD is stronger in urban areas. The following two maps show the largest shares of votes from each of the two votes. The first vote directly elects the local candidate into parliament, while the second vote determine’s each party’s total vote share in the Bundestag (Erststimme \/ Zweitstimme, read more about the electoral system in Germany at Wikipedia<\/a>). When it comes to showing the real distribution of voting patterns in Germany, these two main maps give the more honest result of this year’s election:<\/p>\n

\"Equal<\/a>
\n(click for larger version)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n


\nIf you have trouble reading these gridded cartograms – each transformed grid cell reflects the total number of people living in there, so that larger grid cells have proportionally more people living there than smaller grid cells – then the following revised version of the gridded population cartogram of Germany showing a topographic map layer, some key river systems and most importantly a number of city labels may help to better understand where places are in the above electoral maps:<\/p>\n

\"Equal<\/a>
\n(click for larger version)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Here is a full list of all blog posts on Views of the World related to the 2013 general election in Germany with many more maps, and also some entries from the archive of the 2009 election:<\/p>\n