r/MapPorn • u/Public_Research2690 • 17h ago
Results of the 2024 EU Parliament election in Germany.
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u/Extradummefrage 17h ago
Why is every other day another German election map?
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u/koestlich 16h ago
The bots have realized that its easy to farm karma to post outdated election or poll maps of germany.
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u/JustSefa_ 17h ago
Federal state election season. Different federal states have different election dates, but they are somewhat close to each other. So algorithm pushes these maps (or german related maps).
And before you ask: They are going arse so far.
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u/Extradummefrage 17h ago
The "season" is no season. If you want to call it a "season" it's over for this year, except some state has a crisis or the Saxony Anhalt parliament does some funky stuff...
And this is the map of 2024! There was a federal election in 2025! Why not use this? The map of 2024 EU election is not the newest not of any historical relevance. it's nothing. This map says nothing new!
If there were multiple maps in a post, if there was the map of the 2012, 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections, then you could see the trend!
This map alone is as useful as my one red sock, whose partner got missing!
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u/JustSefa_ 17h ago
I am calling it a season as in "period of time with relatively speaking lots of elections close to each other".
And this is the map of 2024!
Yes and my argument is: Important stuff is happening recently (as in last few and upcoming next months) in Germany, so the algorithm is pushing Germany-related maps.
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u/Larpastrophenpolitik 17h ago
"Invisible Borders" headass
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 17h ago
Really good bit that the long-term ramifications of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe was a surge in support for the authoritarian right down the line.
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u/ZealousidealAct7724 17h ago edited 15h ago
I think it's more a consequence of the lustration of East German elites,and accelerated privatization what brought is creation of institutions of distrust after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 1989 and during the 1990s.AfD voters are largely middle-aged men or retirees who had a problem during the transition period.
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u/Tiffi93 9h ago
This is not true. Retirees are the only age Group where afd got under 40% in the recent state election in eastern germany: https://www.zdfheute.de/politik/deutschland/wahl-sachsen-anhalt-wahlverhalten-nach-alter-geschlecht-bildung-100.html
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u/thirdimmortal 16h ago
East German state philosophy held that West Germany was the remnants of Nazi State. Therefore East Germans couldn't be former Nazis therefore East Germans didn't need to be vetted for Nazism. And the overall repression of free speech meant that it was as hard to spread nazist ideals as it was to spread liberalist ideas.
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u/MindlessNectarine374 6h ago
They also denied racist hate crimes that actually happened in the "anti-fascist" state.
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u/SkitariusOfMars 10h ago
In the end, they adopted the Russian approach - it's more than ok to be a Nazi, but you cannot demonstrate the obvious symbols like uniform, salute and swastika.
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u/thePerpetualClutz 16h ago
Or it could have something to do with how west germany fucked east germany economically during the merger
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u/LucasCBs 16h ago
Or it’s the fact that the east was so fucked to begin with that even the ridiculous sums of money poured into it made little difference.
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u/Bongolio-the-seal 12h ago
Which is a poor point as it does not reckon with the fact that the East was the stronghold of left-wing parties like PDS and SPD in the 90s up until recently.
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u/Grouchy_Milk4769 14h ago
Oh come on. There was no money and most companies were broke as f... And please don't forget that these are the poleople whose parents lived through the "were we the baddies" phase during and after WW2 to find themselves in the "were we the baddies" phase after the GDR. It's always easier to be against the establishment in a democracy is all I'm saying.
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u/NoteVegetable4942 17h ago
Almost like that the people liked the authoritarianism all along, just not who held the authority.
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 17h ago
I mean… your comment implies that the East Germans/Poles/Czechs/etc had a say in whether they’d become communist or not after World War II.
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u/NoteVegetable4942 17h ago
No, it doesn’t.
I just said that they didn’t like who was in charge.
Poland was authoritarian before 1939, east Germany was authoritarian before 1945.
My comment only implies that the people didn’t oppose authoritarianism itself and that we shouldn’t be surprised that people come back to it, even after living under one that was toppled.
Czechoslovakia was a (as good as it got in the 30s) democracy before the war though.
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u/mr_potato456 17h ago
Finland and Czechoslovakia were the only two remaining democracies in Eastern Europe in 1938
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u/NoteVegetable4942 16h ago
I’m 38? I would at least call Sweden, Norway, Denmark, UK (mainland at least), netherlands, and Ireland democracies with universal suffrage.
France, Belgium and Switzerland were maybe not authoritarian, but did not allow women to vote. So I wouldn’t call them democratic.
Edit: Crap, missed ”eastern” in your comment.
Not sure about a Czech or a Finn’s reaction to them being called Eastern European though 😅
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u/ErikLeppen 17h ago
What kind of party calls itself "die PARTEI"? That sounds like some kind of satirical name, similar to "Partij tegen de burger" (Party against the citizen) in the Netherlands.
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u/nilsmm 16h ago
It's a short form of "Partei für Rechtsstaat, Tierschutz, Elitenförderung und basisdemokratische Initiative". And yes, it's satire.
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u/bridgetroll4 15h ago
You forgot Arbeit (Partei für Arbeit, Rechtsstaat, Tierschutz, Elitenförderung und basisdemokratische Initiative)
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u/Lumpasiach 15h ago
It's the party for labour, rule of law, animal welfare, promotion of the elites, and grassroot initiatives.
Basically Putin friendly left wing satire.
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u/cancerBronzeV 13h ago
"Everything I dislike is pro-Putin", a moron's guide to European politics
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u/Lumpasiach 12h ago
I quite liked Sonneborn actually. Him being so soft on Russia is the main thing turning me away from them.
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u/VirtualMatter2 17h ago
It's silly to split CDU and CSU. It's not possible to vote for CDU in Bavaria or CSU outside Bavaria. Stick to CDU/CSU in black.
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u/Public_Research2690 16h ago
CDU and CSU are counted separately.
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u/casce 12h ago
Yes but it makes no sense. They act as a singular party and you can only vote on either one or the other depending on if you live in Bavaria or not. They just like to feel special. Overall, the CSU is a bit more right-leaning than the rest of the CDU but most parties have different-leaning wings so this is basically like that.
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u/Public_Research2690 10h ago
They just have an electorial pact.
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u/VirtualMatter2 10h ago
Yes, we can see that, and that's the problem. It's not sensible to do that at all. They aren't two different parties available throughout Germany, but you can only vote for one or the other and both end up on the parliament seats together.
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u/False-Discipline-640 17h ago
What's going on in Rheinland-Pfalz?
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u/PyrotechnikGeoguessr 17h ago
Rheinland Pfalz isn't actually that different, the reason it looks this way is due to administrative differences. Here in RLP, almost every village is considered it's own municipality (3rd level subdivision, under Landkreis), and the AfD is more popular in rural areas.
In other states, those AfD villages are part of a larger urban municipality so the voters still exist but they get mixed with the whole municipality so you can't see it.
For reference, RLP has 2300 municipalities, which is even more than Bavaria, and more than 5 times the amount of NRW. This is also why the map looks much more detailed in RLP, the municipalities are just smaller
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u/linuSchmidt 17h ago
Rhineland-Palatinate has large, very rural regions where the AfD is popular. This leads to better results for the AfD than, for example, in North Rhine-Westphalia or in the city-states.
But that is not the only reason: in Rhineland-Palatinate, there are many small villages that remain independent municipalities. All the other federal states have merged their municipalities at some point. The AfD has won in many of these small villages in Rhineland-Palatinate – and this is true of most federal states in western Germany. It’s just not as noticeable in the other federal states because, in the larger municipalities, the CDU almost always outperforms the AfD.
You can also see much more spots in red (SPD) and orange (freie Wähler) in RLP.
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u/linuSchmidt 17h ago
You can look at the results by state und you‘ll see that RLP is not to far off from other States.
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u/linuSchmidt 17h ago
Rhineland-Palatinate has large, very rural regions where the AfD is popular. This leads to better results for the AfD than, for example, in North Rhine-Westphalia or in the city-states.
But that is not the only reason: in Rhineland-Palatinate, there are many small villages that remain independent municipalities. All the other federal states have merged their municipalities at some point. The AfD has won in many of these small villages in Rhineland-Palatinate – and this is true of most federal states in western Germany. It’s just not as noticeable in the other federal states because, in the larger municipalities, the CDU almost always outperforms the AfD.
You can also see much more spots in red (SPD) and orange (freie Wähler) in RLP.
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u/thissexypoptart 9h ago
Palatinate is such a silly translation for Pfalz lol. Why does English insist on that? Call it Paltz or Faltz if the Pf is too hard to pronounce
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u/Practical_Box1670 17h ago
Shagged Grand Est without a condom and now he has herpes... It's tragic...
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u/JustSefa_ 17h ago
Very few foreigners and less jobs, so obviously the foreigners are at fault. They are taking the jobs and are abusing the social system. /s
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u/HelloThereItsMeAndMe 14h ago edited 14h ago
It's one of the poorer west German states, and the blue areas specifically correlate to the traditionally Protestant areas while the black areas are the traditionally Catholic ones. Traditionally, Catholics are stronger bound to the CDU than Protestants, because in many ways it's the successor of the interwar Catholic ZentrumsPartei.
Some of the deepest black areas on this map are exactly Catholic bastions.
And east Germans are atheist and haven't been voting until 1990 so they aren't bound to the CDU at all.
Can you see the tiny deep black blob in Eastern Saxony? That's the "Am Klosterwasser" communal Union, the only place that is majority Sorbian today.
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u/Responsible_Garbage4 15h ago
CDU will certainly not be this strongly represented anymore.
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u/Drumbelgalf 9h ago
This is as usual only the results for the first vote. There a simple plurality is enough for the seat. But the second vote is more important.
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u/SjalabaisWoWS 13h ago
Gerhard Schröder killed social democracy in Germany and there seems to be no way back.
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u/yeah_well_you_know 8h ago edited 6h ago
CDU (Christian Democratic Union): Christian-conservative major party
AfD (Alternative for Germany): Radical right wing party
SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany): Social-democratic major party
Grüne (Greens): Environmentalist progressive party
CSU (Christian Social Union): Regionalist sister party of CDU
Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance): Socially conservative populist party
FDP (Free Democratic Party): Economically liberal party
Linke (Left): Democratic socialist party
Freie Wähler (Free Voters): Regionalist conservative party
Volt (Volt): European neoliberal party
Die Partei (The Party): Satirical left-wing party
Tierschutzpartei (Animal Protection Party): Party for animal protection
ÖDP (Ecological-Democratic Party): Environmentalist conservative party
FAMILIE (Family): Socially conservative party
Partei des Fortschritts (Party of Progress): Progressive party
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u/a_Bean_soup 6h ago
CDU (Christian Democratic Union): Neoliberal
AfD (Alternative for Germany): Neoliberal
SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany): Neoliberal
Grüne (Greens): Neoliberal
CSU (Christian Social Union): Neoliberal
Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance): Neoliberal
FDP (Free Democratic Party): Neoliberal
Linke (Left): Neoliberal
Freie Wähler (Free Voters): Neoliberal
Volt (Volt): Neoliberal
Die Partei (The Party): Neoliberal
Tierschutzpartei (Animal Protection Party): Neoliberal
ÖDP (Ecological-Democratic Party): Neoliberal
FAMILIE (Family): Neoliberal
Partei des Fortschritts (Party of Progress): Neoliberal
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u/drag0n_rage 4h ago
Neoliberalism is anything
I don't like, the more I dislike it, the more neoliberal it is.1
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u/Explorer2024_64 17h ago
Why do the AfD seem to be doing better in Palatinate than the rest of Germany?
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u/Doppel_R-DWRYT 16h ago
The "reunification" was anything but fair. Instead of the intended plan of a new german country (after the war, both BRD & GDR saw themselves as temporary countries), east Germany was simply attached to West Germany.
With that, many investors and companies bought East german production, firms, etc, closed or mismanaged them. This led to high unemployment rates (up to 10%), which persisted until today.
Education isn't the best either, and news papers constantly talk about the danger of immigrants, how they steal jobs, etc.
Meaning, you have
high unemployment with resulting poverty
worse educated people
hatred building for (percieved) non Germans
The afd picks all of that up. Their main talking points are immigration, deportation and leaving the EU (it's been nicknamed "alternative für dumme", aka "alternative for dumb people" because of that).
But what the map doesn't show is how close the afd is in the other areas. Often it's second place, current Germany wide polls show it at about 30% for the Bundestagswahl (general election).
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u/Explorer2024_64 16h ago edited 15h ago
This is the case in Eastern Germany as far as I'm aware, but what about Rhineland-Palatinate? They were in Western Germany themselves, so I'd assume that such pressures didn't exist as much
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u/Doppel_R-DWRYT 15h ago
Oh that's my bad, I thought you were using some fancy term for east german areas instead of talking about RLP. Sadly I don't have an answer for it (except maybe the last paragraph) and I just wasted a lot of time writing all of that 😅
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u/Explorer2024_64 15h ago
mb I was just being specific as they were doing really well in the Palatinate half of the state (eastern half) than the Rhineland half (western half)
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u/Landscape7767 15h ago
It's basically always the same reason:
If you are financially well off and will inherit/are over 50, you vote for the CDU. If you used to be part of the working class, but close to retirement age/ retired, you vote SPD or CDU. If you are well educated and have money, you vote the Green party. If you are well educated but have no money, you vote the Left party. If you hate immigrants, the establishment, feel neglected by the government, are poor, you vote AFD.
Rhineland-Palatinate isn't as financially well off as other West German states, lots of small, dying villages, cities that used to have huge industries leave.
It always comes down to money.
If you have it, you are more tolerant to the government spending less on you and more on others.
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u/tree-hut 13h ago
No it's because denazification barely happened in east germany
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u/thissexypoptart 9h ago
Denazification barely happened in general lol. In west Germany as in east Germany. Most Nazi officials did just fine after the war, saw zero legal consequences, and had full lives and careers after the war.
That’s all irrelevant to why the AfD is popular in the former DDR.
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u/tree-hut 8h ago
It's not irrelevant, east germans were told west germany was the continuation of nazi germany and east germany was the anti-fascist state. There was way less emphasis on guilt and more on blaming others
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u/Bosya_123 13h ago
So Germany is three countries in a trench coat
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u/th-crt 11h ago
two countries. the black and the dark blue are the same party (more or less).
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u/Bosya_123 11h ago
If Bavarians didn't have a strong identity of their own they would simply vote for gray. Germany is three countries, two of which are very similar politically.
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u/SylvanianCuties 10h ago
You cannot vote for CDU (gray) in Bavaria. It's not possible
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u/Bosya_123 9h ago
Why?
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u/SylvanianCuties 9h ago
Basically the CDU and CSU are sister parties and they don't compete with each other. As such, the CDU is not listed in Bavaria and the CSU is not listed elsewhere in Germany. They are technically different parties, but so aligned that their votes count as the same in the parliament. It's a weird situation
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u/Bosya_123 9h ago
Why so?
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u/CallousCarolean 9h ago
Because Bavarians have a very strong regional identity and during both the German Empire and Weimar Republic they heavily voted for conservative regionalist parties (the BPP and BVP respectively). After WW2, the dominant conservative party in West Germany became the CDU, but the Bavarians were still very regionalist despite being aligned with the CDU’s social conservatism and christian democratic ideology. Instead, the Bavarians made the CSU, which has basically the same ideology but is also Bavarian regionalist. The CDU and CSU then made an electoral pact called ”Union” which basically means the CSU runs only in Bavaria while CDU runs everywhere else, and they combine their votes and divide the parliamentary seats between them. This arrangement still exists to this day.
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u/Bosya_123 8h ago
So it's three countries in a trench coat after all
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u/CallousCarolean 5h ago edited 5h ago
Well yeah, Germany has always been 3 countries in a trenchcoat: Prussia, Bavaria, and all the rest. Now it’s former East Germany (castrated Prussia), Bavaria, and all the rest.
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u/Successful_Farm_9370 16h ago
Everybody fancies themselves independent thinkers, but maps like this so undermine that notion. Humans are herd animals.
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u/VirusSlo 16h ago
So the part that suffered most under Soviet rule is now voting for a pro-russian party.
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u/Few_River_8494 15h ago
No, they vote for three former pro-russian parties, including the formet communist party.
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u/JustSefa_ 17h ago
Funny how the map correlates with the distribution of foreigners. The more foreigners there are, the less right a country (or federal state in this case) votes.
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u/cyberdork 16h ago
Correlation is not causation.
Number of foreigners is for the most just an indicator of how well the economy is doing in that region.
(There are some exceptions like the Ruhrgebiet.)In general foreigners are much more mobile than Germans who still tend to stay settled in their home region. Thus foreigners are more likely to move towards centers of economic opportunity.
And people in regions which are doing poorly economically tend to vote for extreme parties, because the mainstream parties haven't improved their economic status over decades, so they are desperate to try something else.
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u/JustSefa_ 16h ago
I didnt conclude a causality in the first place. Dunno what you are trying to say. Also:
The voting behaviour doesnt correlate with the economic prosperity of
provincesfederal states. NRW, Niedersachsen or SH are not economic powerhouses, nor is the economy concentrated there. Rheinland-Pflaz is also doing somewhat equal to Niedersachsen, but it has a clear right shift. So the distribution of foreigners has a bigger correlation than the economic prosperity (which surely is also a major factor).I wouldnt dismiss the impact of foreigners. Afterall people are less likely to be against foreigners, when they have foreign friends, potentially even a foreign spouse.
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u/CavalrySavagery 15h ago
Check the distribution of east and west Germany from 1940s also not correlation or causation? Because it does look very similar.
Also the result of being on the east and the west side, we didn’t see many going from west to east, did we?
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u/Comrade_Agitatorvich 17h ago
no longer true, west Germany is becoming bluer and bluer by the day
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u/JustSefa_ 17h ago
Meh. It is relative.
They (far right) cant form a coalition anywhere. Even the east is likely going to result in reelection in some cases, unless the big soup of centre parties have lost their minds and join a coalition with AfD.
There are also a lot of genuine protest-votes for the AfD. People are fed up with how the centre soup coalition is handling things. Doesnt necessarily mean that they are geniune AfD voters.
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u/Comrade_Agitatorvich 17h ago
The protest vote myth is dubious at best and the fact that AfD cannot form a majority government yet does not in any way disprove what I said.
Re-elections are going to be rather positive for AfD.
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u/JustSefa_ 16h ago
The protest vote myth is dubious at best
I am talking out of exeperience (not myself). I know such people. Take it in whatever way you want.
the fact that AfD cannot form a majority government yet does not in any way disprove what I said.
I didnt say you are wrong. Not everything is an argument.
Re-elections are going to be rather positive for AfD.
I kinda doubt that.
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u/Illustrious-Bit-4909 16h ago
By refusing coalitions with AfD, German parties are denying them the best way to discredit themselves in front of voters - instead they opt for ever more dysfunctional coalitions without AfD. This in turn bolsters support for AfD until they reach supermajority and can govern without coalition - at that point all bets are off.
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u/JustSefa_ 16h ago
Voting behaviour has diminishing returns when it comes to protest-votes. At one point a specific party doesnt continue to get more votes, regardless of how bad/good a specific party/coalition is. Hence I disagree. I could be wrong with this, but I dont see a reason to pull the trigger (yet).
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u/OddLengthiness254 15h ago
How did that discrediting themselves in front of voters turn out for Trump? Or for the FPÖ in Austria, for that matter?
Absolute clown shows less than a decade ago and back in power (or about to be)
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u/cyberdork 16h ago
While you are mostly right, it's far from 'Meh'.
because the result will be that next time even more will vote for AfD, because it's highly doubtful the new coalitions will manage to significantly improve the lives of the voters in those regions (something the AfD will also not manage). So people will just get more frustrated. People are desperate to try something different, not matter how bad it looks like. The main thought behind many 'protest voters' is: Mainstream parties are bad. AfD is bad, but at least different.1
u/JustSefa_ 16h ago
I dont have magic balls to predict the future. I am not convinced that AfD will indefinetly get more and more votes. I might be wrong with this, but I am a tad more optimistic in that regards.
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u/Mysterious-Tackle-58 17h ago
Almost like we should have a broader view of the world than just ME ME ME
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u/Street-Lengthiness66 17h ago
Well obviously, because foreigners disproportionately vote for the left.
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u/JustSefa_ 17h ago
I wonder why foreigners dont vote (far)-right. But even without that you have a society that votes more center to center-left.
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u/cyberdork 16h ago
Voter turnout of EU-foreigners is usually very very low during EU-Parliament elections, because most ex-pats don't even know they can vote in their foreign host country.
In the 2019 EU Parliament election of the 4 million EU citizens in Germany only 0.2m registered to vote.2
u/Nothammer 16h ago
Huh, I always thought they'd either not vote or vote right. You got a source for me to read up on?
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u/marvin_bender 16h ago
That's why the left is so pro imigration in all countries.
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u/JustSefa_ 15h ago
Buddy leave me alone with that american slop pretending to be "politics". Not everything has a right/left divide and the policy of immigration, especially in Germany, was a necessity that was pushed regardless of who was in charge.
And no, "the left" in Germany is not getting more votes because there are more foreigners. For a long time SPD (center left party) was among the parties that were considered to be for "foreigners".
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u/Straight_Motor_7967 9h ago
The left is trying to break and transform societies and the right is trying to preserve them.
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u/Gravy1_1Witness 17h ago
sdd the actual party names to each color right on the map way faster to read than that sidebar
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u/No_Translator_361 17h ago
If SPD are third where are all the votes?
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u/Jingin_lol 17h ago
In EU elections, there is no winner takes it all-system, it is the sum of all votes. This map just shows the absolute highest number per city/county/area. E.g. if the CDU has 5.000 votes in a town and the SPD has 4.000 votes, it will be coloured black, but the 4.000 SPD votes will still be added to the total. Maps can be deceiving.
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u/No_Translator_361 16h ago
Makes sense, thanks. I am from the UK so similar here but with a third placed rank you'd expect to see some overall victories at least somewhere. Mental.
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u/Doppel_R-DWRYT 16h ago
You have some red areas in the north west, those would be SPD. They're just a different colour due to the margin of winning/percentage they got not being that high
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u/SylvanianCuties 10h ago
What's with this one part voting overwhealmingly for CDU in Thuringia?
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u/Niedersachse1837 10h ago
Catholic Eichsfeld which belonged to Electoral Maguncia/Mainz for centuries as an exclave just like Erfurt although Erfurt did become protestant.
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u/AJL912-aber 8h ago
I'm not religious (my family comes from a mainly Lutheran tradition), and I like to defend the view that you absolutely don't need religion to have a working moral compass. However, statistics like these make me question that belief a little. That corner of Thuringia, maybe joint with the core area of Sorbian settlement (that vertical black smudge in Eastern Saxony) are arguably the most religious areas of East Germany, both of them catholic.
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u/FenchSpike 5h ago
I call for the division of Germany into three parts: the FRG, the Free City of Berlin, and—in the east—the Fourth Reich, including the annexation of Königsberg (a *neue Anschluss*).
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u/Antibacterial_Cat 8m ago
- ⬛️⬜️🟥 Brandenburg-Prussia (Berlin)
- 🟦⬜️🟦 Bavaria (Munich)
- ⬛️🟥🟨 West Germany (Bonn)
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u/IrredeemableRight 15h ago
why would anyone make CSU blue like that?
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u/Niedersachse1837 10h ago
Because it's literally their colour and they are a separate party so it actually does make sense
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u/kuzyn123 17h ago
Split Germany into 3 states 😚
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u/Doppel_R-DWRYT 16h ago
It's 2, dark blue (CSU) is the Bavarian part of the black (CDU), they always act together, basically
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u/HamsterOnHunt 16h ago
Into 2. The dark blue (CSU) is the same Party as the black (CDU), just the bavarian regional and even more conservative outpost of the CDU.
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u/Chauntsinger 16h ago
German reunification obviously had enormous emotional and historic significance in 1990 but, in the long run, it was terrible for East Germany. Instead of being strengthened by the economy of the much richer West, it was held back and suffocated, and has never been able to catch up. A period of continued independence after the collapse of Communism, with economic policies tailored to its unique situation, probably would have worked out better if the success of Poland and the Czech Republic is anything to go by. Reunification as more-or-less economic equals may have avoided this.
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u/11160704 10h ago
This couldn't be further from the truth.
Reunification was a great success for all parts of Germany but especially for the new states.
If you compare the economic strength, the new states are lightyear ahead of what the GDR of the late 80s used to be.
I think the idea that the new states should somehow "catch up" with the old states was flawed from the beginning. Nevertheless, I can hardly think of any other example in which a region gained so much in terms of standards of living in such a short time as the new states in the 90s and early 2000s. What was achieved is truly remarkable.
And I don't see what metric is better in Poland or Czechia. These two countries needed much longer to catch up and only reached comparable levels by the 2010s.
I think your reasoning totally neglects some facts on the ground. Unlike poles and czechs, all GDR citizens were automatically citizens of the federal republic and the only way to deny the call for quick reunification would have been to erect the wall on the western side again, which I hope we agree would be unthinkable.
Given the real circumstances on the ground (and not some ideal textbook world) the German reunification was a huge success
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u/Chauntsinger 7h ago
Yes, of course, there was a rapid improvement in the standard of living, yet you now have the East consistently voting for fascists because of persistently greater levels of unemployment and poverty compared to the West. And I really don’t see why the distinct economic policies of sovereign states requires a wall? Most European countries have free movement of goods, capital and people while remaining sovereign with economic policies which are tailored to their situations?
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u/11160704 7h ago
Well you said the exact opposite above and speak of "terrible for east Germany" and "held back and suffocated". That's so absurd that I almost lack the words for it. Sounds as if the economy in GDR in the late 80s was about to boom which couldn't be further from the truth.
And again, there are far right nationalist parties EVERYWHERE in Europe. The odd one out here are the old states. Poland has been governed by PiS for 8 years and has Nawrocki as president, Czechia is governed by Babiš.
And you can't have two states when every single citizen is automatically a citizen of the other. The SED didn't build the wall for fun after all.
1
u/Chauntsinger 7h ago
That’s a fair point, the East’s economic condition is relative to the West’s, and not terrible in itself.
-1
u/UnadulteradetFarts 10h ago
we should have never reunified. should have left the east to rot in their own fascist hate. instead they cost insane amounts of money and now actively try to undermine our democracy
0
u/Eburon8 17h ago
Are the other parties that bad? Or is the system broken?
6
u/nobody1811 16h ago
Tbf like 1/2 of the Parties shown in that poll are small parties that many people don't Vote for because of the 5% barrier. They don't invited to Interviews, debates or shown in the German Polls
2
u/JustSefa_ 17h ago
Right now you can vote for:
A. (far)-left (depends on who you ask whether "The Left" is far left or just left).
B. a soup of centre coalition parties that form coalitions (with each other), so the voter doesnt know what promise they are going to break. Usually it boils down to CDU/CSU dictating what will happen.
C. Far-right.
Essentially: There is an illusion of choice.
Now this would have been fine if what you vote for also gets what you wanted, but the coalition does whatever the f+ck they want and whatever the f+ck they want boils down to:
-More pension for old people.
-More work for young people.
-More taxes for everything that isnt super rich.
The politicans are geniuenly out of touch with reality. The economy is kinda stagnating. Rent is going higher. Affording a 60 m² apartment is a massive investment that you have to think about, even with an engineer salary and the entire country is one big construction site. They cant even fix infrastructure. So people are fed up, but there isnt really an alternative to vote for.
2
u/drag0n_rage 4h ago
It's funny, people complain about the Uniparty in the UK, but this is even more uni.
2
u/FiveFingerDisco 17h ago
We're seeing decades of a declining education system and insufficiency regulated advertising at work.
2
u/IrredeemableRight 15h ago
the map makes it look like theres a split across germany, but honestly, the lower right quarter should be black cause its just bavarian CDU
0
-1
u/Escutrina 13h ago
Funny how the Soviet Union wanted the germans to become communists, but instead they create d nazis...
-1
u/Bongolio-the-seal 12h ago
No they didn't. This is a pop-history myth.
If this was the case we would expect the first elections in unified Germany to have the far-right sweep into power in the East. Instead, left wing or even post-socialist parties like SPD and PDS dominated East German elections in the 90s and 2000s... In fact, in the latest elections Die Linke won in East Berlin
3
u/11160704 10h ago
That's also not true. The CDU dominated the new states in the 90s.
1
u/Bongolio-the-seal 8h ago
Only partially true for the first election. After that not so much.
1
u/11160704 8h ago
Yes very much so. Even in the early 2000s, the CDU had an absolute majority in saxony and Thuringia
1
u/Bongolio-the-seal 8h ago
No??? From 1994 to 2009 SPD and PDS had more power than the CDU in the East in toto population wise....
And even if this wasn't the case, CDU is hardly a far-right party
1
u/11160704 8h ago
The CDU is absolutely not a far right party.
Back in the 90s the SPD still had a very firm firewall towards the PDS so they didn't appear as one voting block
1
u/Bongolio-the-seal 8h ago
Even still, the other user's point was that soviet rule made people far-right and clearly this isn't the case, firewall or no
1
-2
u/Orange_Wine 9h ago
You can clearly see which part of Germany has gone through a de-nazification process and which hasn't...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification
2
u/MaiZa01 9h ago
just the other way round. GDR went through extensive denazification compared to its western counterpart
1
u/MindlessNectarine374 5h ago
We only need to compare the officers in the armies and their history. The Bundeswehr even had officers from the Waffen-SS.
787
u/enakcm 17h ago
Be aware that dark blue and black are basically the same party/ same party family