Largest party by electoral district in the German federal election

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).

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.

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.

Taking the ex-communist countries as a whole, my impression is that forced social progress gets in the way of real social progress. Add a shitty economy on top of that, and you have fertile ground for fascists.

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 ...

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.

Edit: I take it back. FUCK THE CDU!

It's funny to see Berlin, a Linke haven, lost in a huge sea of nazis.

Um jede Großstadt, die nicht schwarz oder blau ist?

Gelsenkirchen is a traditional working class area, which used to be secure SPD heartland. SPD has lost voters massively to AfD among workers over the years, including among the immigrant working class.

Soldiers in Germany tend to vote CDU. The last couple of years the head of the Bundestag's defense commission Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann from the FDP was super popular. In the past SPD was also really strong. These two polls on the Bundeswehr subreddit have FDP and CDU together with a supermajority. Now that's of course not representative, but gives you an idea that the military doesn't vote far right.

US Military can't vote in German elections. The only voting population involved with the military would be NATO Aircom and even that German population would be small compared to the 80%+ turnout.

Lippe which includes GFM-Rommel-Kaserne voted CDU with 27%.

Even in Grafenwöhr CDU was around 27%.

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.

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

What was that line from WWZ again?

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.

like the only seats they’re winning

Germany has proportional distribution of seats. This map doesn't show that.

Die Linke is a continuation of the ruling party of the socialist dictatorship DDR in East Germany. It's a collection of some literal old school o.g. tankies from the Socialist government, actual communists, democratic socialists, left social democrats who left the SPD, and people from social movements. In short it's a mix of people left of social democrats. In East Germany it's also a conservative party in a way for people who want the old DDR back. However it also has a strong support nowadays among the educated urban "woke" left. They reject rearmament for Germany and reject sending arms to Ukraine. Although they blame Russia for the war, they have an anti-western ideology and want to disband NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia. Kuba's foreign policy is mentioned favorably in their election agenda.

Last year prominent tankie-ish leader Sarah Wagenknecht split off the Linke to form their own party BSW. BSW is the anti-woke left, who care about social policies first, but don't put a focus on LGBT, want more strict immigration. They gained 4.9% in the election and thus narrowly missed getting seats in parliament. They blame NATO for the war in Ukraine. Exiting NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia is also on their agenda.

So the answer if they're tankies is not simple. Linke is more the useful idiot of Putin, while BSW are actual Putin bootlickers.

Is it just a matter of the poorer more overlooked areas becoming polarised?

Economic issues play a role as well of course.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't think the UK or the USA will intervene this time.

What the fuck kind of comment is this?

It does not. This is just a geographic breakdown, and in reality baby blue (AfD) got just 1/5 of the vote and seats (because former East Germany is less populous).

Nope. MMP.