With Germany voting next week to elect a new Bundestag, I thought people might find these maps of the German results from the European Parliament election interesting. They are available on the website of the Federal Returning Officer, and show the level of support for each party by state and district, as well as maps showing who won each district and state. My favourite map has been posted below, which shows the level of support for the Left Party in each district. Notice a pattern?
Interesting that the East still clings to their old socialist ways.
The East is also poorer than the West, even now, which would lead to a more left-leaning vote (clearly).
Ah! So the cycle is complete!
Leftist government enacts leftist policies —> Leftist policies leave population poorer as a whole —> Leftist government re-elected on campaign of leftist policies for the poor –> GOTO #start
Garbage. In any society there will be the rich and the poor. ‘Left’ Governments are more inclined to offer greater welfare protection, which naturally leads poorer people, and social justice types to vote left. ‘Right’ Governments are more inclined to reduce ‘the welfare state’ and try to start up shareholder societies, under the deluded pretence that society can exist where everyone has the ability to add to the economy. This naturally attracts richer people, people who do add the most taxes to the economy and don’t like that their taxes are spent on people other than themselves.
Which is why, to conclude, Maggie Thatcher can get f***ed.
Forgive my ignorance, as I’m not much of an expert on German politics, but what’s the story with Saarland? Why is there that pocket of support for the Left Party there?
Its a pocket of poverty in the West (yes, they do exist, Rationalist!-its an old coal and steel region), and also the political base of Oskar Lafonatine (co-?) leader of Die Linke. He used to be Minister-Presdient of the state, while still a Social Democrat
That area’s flipped between Germany and France several times in the last couple of hundred years, due to the wars between those countries, so it’s always been a little bit weird. Saarland was run by the French from World War 2 until 1959, then became part of West Germany; meanwhile, Alsace (across the river) was run by Germans for a while up to the end of World War 1, then became part of France, and in between proclaimed their own Soviet Republic which lasted for about a week. Borders are pretty fluid around there.
Saarland has not been part of France proper from the Congress of Vienna (1815) onwards.
It was only the legacy of the two world wars that saw it come under temporary French occupation and remain separate from Germany in the aftermath of both. (Even if the French may have wished it to be something other than temporary.) The 1935 plebiscite produced 90% support for rejoining Germany. Similarly the 1955 plebiscite produced a two thirds rejection of the push for an independent Saarland.
Hence it’s not exactly the mirror image of Alsace-Lorraine, which was fully incorporated into Germany from 1871-1919 and 1940-45.
Results will be visible here:
http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/index.html
Exit polls point to a Richmond (Yellow and Black) coalition instead of another Essendon one (which was the only real question coming from this election):
http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20090927-22193.html
I keyed in these exit poll figures from the BBC webpage:
CDU/CSU: 33.5%
SPD: 23.5%
FDP: 14.5%
Left party: 13%
Green party: 10%
Into this mandate calculator:
http://www.election.de/cgi-bin/call_mandate.pl?bgcolor=ffffdd&methode=Lague&sitze=598&parteien=CDU/CSU,SPD,FDP,DIE%20LINKE,GR%DCNE,Sonstige&stimmen=33.0,25.0,14.0,12.0,10.0,6.0
and it gave the Richmond coalition 304 seats in a 598 seat assembly. Just have to wait and see what the real results look like – but I shouldn’t imaging they would be much different.
Thats amazing how the east is still clutching a very strong view, compared to the south west