31.7% to be precise. So it's almost a third... But why? Given the lower population, the per capita money transfer was even more in favor of Lower Saxony...BTW, BW and BY constantly gain in population, while most others lose inhabitants.
More taxes to be paid, easier to build up a proper infrastructure, since Villages are not as far apart and buses / trains don't have to travel that long routes. I guess the fact that Lower Saxony is made up by lots of swamps in the north is countered by the hilly nature of Bavaria...
Yeah, but that's why they got more per capita...after paying the police officers and the teachers and all the other things the state government does, there should have been more money left to invest in infrastructure. But I also realize that there are long term developments at work. Once you miss the boat, it's harder to catch up. Still, even if Lower Saxony didn't do anything wrong, it's obvious that Bavaria (and BW) did a lot of things right. Similarly, Saxony and Thuringia did very well in the East compared to every other East German state. It might all be coincidence/luck, but given the fact that the policies of CDU/CSU and FDP make a lot more sense to me as well, I'm willing to say that it isn't. At least not exclusively.
Yeah, but still shouldn't be left out. I mean, during the last Federal election the CDU won in almost every electoral district in both BW and Bavaria. Except for Stuttgart, Munich, Freiburg, Mannheim (and they won only narrowly in Nuremberg and Karlsruhe). Which are the biggest cities of those states... now add that the Northern states are generally more urban and it sounds like a better theory than smart people vote conservative . Until the 1960s the entire German industry did depend on the mining and steel industry. Especially the Ruhr area and the Saarland were entirely dominated by those (and the powerful mining and steel companies). The CDU governments of Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia (the state had been ruled by conservatives (CDU and Zentrum) from 1947 to 56, and from 1958 to 1966), and the Saarland (ruled EXCLUSIVELY by conservatives until 1985 - even more dependent on mining and steel than NRW and today one of Germany's poorest states) prevented modernization until the late 1960s - when the crisis in the mining industry was one of the major factors in bringing down both the Federal and the NRW state government. And then people were in deep shit, as you can hardly change a region that was dominated and totally focussed on one single trade for generations in a few years. It's not as if you can turn hundred thousands of miners into IT-specialists within a year or two. Same for the coastal regions: the German governments had a massive interest in keeping the dockyards and docks there for a long time. They had to remodel the entire infrastructure there first. But that parts of Northern Germany (besides the coastal regions this also goes for the Harz mountains btw), NRW and the Saarland were almost monocultural economically was something caused by conservative governments, as those either started the whole thing or refused to change something BEFORE the crisis hit.
The northern states are more urban? How do you come to that conclusion? Bavaria certainly isn't, but neither is Lower Saxony. BW on the other hand is quite urban. The greater Stuttgart area has 5 million inhabitants alone, which makes it the second largest urban area in Germany after the Ruhr region. Plus there are other bigger urban areas like Karlsruhe or Mannheim, plus some smaller ones like Ulm, Konstanz, Freiburg... BTW, I hope you saw that I was somewhat over-stressing the point. I certainly see that there are lots of factors, culturally as well as economically that lead to the dominance of one of the political factions. But I'm confident in saying that success would be one of these factors. So your point basically is that as soon as people become dumb and poor they vote left? I'm kidding of course. But I think that your position here is at least as simplistic as mine. I really can't say who caused it, since I'm too young, but at least I remember the recent history. I remember for example that as far as I can think back, coal mining in Germany was basically dead and only kept alive via massive subsidies which is generally quite unhealthy for a society. And it was the left who is responsible for the slow death, while the right wanted to kill it more quickly. I remember Lafontaine in the mid 1990s marching on Bonn with his coal miners and blackmailing the government into another decade of subsidies. In the Saarland, it was the CDU who finally put an end to this madness once Müller got elected, while the SPD did everything to prevent change. So at least within my life time, it was the left that refused to adapt, while the right actually made way for changes...so actually, the left is the more structurally conservative side if you ask me... And since we're both indulging in cliches, let me put forth another one. Here are some election maps that clearly show that Sozis = Nazis: But seriously, it's quite obvious, that it's not urban vs. rural. In the North, there are vast rural stretches that are "red" while in the South, urban areas are almost entirely "black". The first map here which is from 1932 is usually explained with religion - Catholics didn't vote for the Nazis as much as Protestants. So maybe religion is still a dominant factor, be it unconsciously...? Of course the religion-explanation doesn't perfectly fit either. Franconia and Württemberg are protestant regions, yet they vote CDU/CSU, while todays East Germany is largely without religion and the far north has turned black while being mostly Protestant. But maybe there is still some truth to it, buried somewhere in our culture. At least it seems more plausible than the urban/rural divide theory.
At least when you compare Lower Saxony to Bavaria you'll find that the number and size of bigger cities is comparable (in both countries the top 8 is above 100 000; certainly if you take Hamburg and Bremen into account), but that Bavaria has more populated and more villages. So, while the geographical size of rural areas between NDS and BY doesn't change, the number of people living in Urban areas, and hence the % of the population, does.
If you add up the top 8 cities in Lower Saxony, you get to around 1.5 million people. That's barely more than Munich. Even if you add Bremen, you're only at around 2 million. That would be a big city population of 23.5% including Bremen, 19% without Bremen. Bavaria has 21.6%. So it's roughly in the same ballpark. Hamburg would obviously tip the scales, but I wouldn't count that. If you wanna add Hamburg anywhere it should be Schleswig-Holstein where I see more cultural as well as economic ties. But I'm willing to accept that Bavaria is more rural. I just don't think the difference is big enough to be a valid explanation for diverging social, economical and political developments. It's probably a factor, but not a very big one. I mean Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is arguably the most rural state in Germany, but apparently it's not dominated by the center-right.
OMG, must Nazi allegations be mentioned even in this thread? And although you're only trying "to indulge in cliches", this comparison is absolutely not funny (especially when knowing how much the Social Democrats had suffered under the Nazis)! The Catholic Church isn't as innocent as you try to sell us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat Of course it's no mystery that Catholics rather vote conservative (CDU/CSU) ... especially in rural areas. Well, almost... I.e. , the 2 largest cities of Bavaria (Munich & Nuremberg) have never been "black bastions".
Btw: Here's a view of all election results in the history of Bundestag: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergebnisse_der_Bundestagswahlen
Well, the map is gone, so you couldn't possibly get the point. It's strange, because it did work at first...but here's a re-upload...the darker the color, the more votes for the NSDAP... and for comparison the other map: You're invited to re-read my post. Then you'll see that I didn't say anything regarding the Catholic church, only about Catholic voters. All right then. At least at the last general election in 2005, one of the four districts in Munich was "red", the entire remainder of Bavaria was "black". As for local politics, I think the more you go into the regions, the harder it is to make out general trends, as there are obviously more specific local conditions.
I used a wider definition of Northern Germany - if you draw the line in Hesse (NRW and Northern Hesse being part of Northern Germany then), which isn't something I made up btw , you have 55-58 cities (depending on where in Hesse you want to draw the line) with over 100k inhabitants in the North and 23-26 in the South. In Lower Saxony and Bremen (you have to take those together, as much of Bremens metro area is in Lower Saxony) 41% of the population lives in agglomerations over 100k inhabitants, compared to 35% in Bavaria. BW's number is higher than that of Lower Saxony, but as I calculated those myself (based on this data: http://www.citypopulation.de/Deutschland-Agglo_d.html) I can't give an exact percentage as the Mannheim and Ulm metro areas include a pretty significant number of people in neighbouring states (BW should still be over 50% though). The economy of the Saarland has grown significantly compared to other states during the last few years (starting out relatively low of course), but it's economy still depends on steel and cars (which hasn't really changed since the 1970s). As for the mining: this had been constantly reduced from the late 1960s on. When the CDU took over only 2 of 18 mines (taking the numbers from Wikipedia) were still in use, so it was sligthly easier to "put an end to the madness" for them when they only had 4000 people in the entire state left working in the mining industry. And of course religion is a factor in election results as well (I briefly mentioned it in my initial post). The Nazis had their best election results in areas with a high number of the protestant rural middle class, but also made gains among the working class, which made them the first party in Germany that was successful among different classes. Catholics on the other hand already had their own niche - also a we vs. them thing etc. So yeah, religion is a factor that shouldn't be ignored, and I guess I should have emphasized this more. However, so is urban vs. rural area. If you look at the results of the 2005 elections you see that there are major differences between rural and urban areas, as well as between Catholic and Protestant areas. However, there isn't much of a difference between rich and poor areas (all data from tagesschau.de): SPD (always listed first) vs. CDU in 2005 in: Cities (pop. over 100k): 38 vs. 27 Towns (pop. over 20k): 37 vs. 34 Small towns (pop. under 20k): 33 vs. 38 Rural areas: 29 vs. 41 Areas with: High population density: 38 vs. 29 Average population density: 34 vs. 37 Low population density: 32 vs. 38 mostly Catholic population: 28 vs. 46 mostly Protestant pop.: 41 vs. 32 Mixed pop.: 36 vs. 36 High purchasing power: 35 vs. 35 Average purchasing power: 35 vs. 38 Low purchasing power: 29 vs. 31 High social status: 33 vs. 31 Middling social staus: 36 vs. 34 Low social status: 35 vs. 37
But if you look at Munich and Nuremberg (all districts there) the CSU gets much lower results/narrower wins than normally. While in most Bavarian districts the CSU gets 50-60% they only got results in the low 40s even in those districts of Munich they won. The party got less than 45% in only 6 of Bavaria's 38 electoral districts - all 4 districts of Munich and both districts of Nuremberg.
I have to say I'm somewhat surprised, especially by the last part...I wonder how exactly they define social status though... The other thing I find somewhat surprising are the numbers for cities and towns. I guess it's a personal thing though. I'm originally from the Stuttgart area and live now in a very Catholic region. The rest would be as expected, I guess...
It's not that I deny a correlation. It's just that it sounded somewhat simplistic. Because if there was such a clear connection, one would expect Munich, Stuttgart and all the other big cities to be SPD strongholds while the rural areas in the North should be CDU strongholds. Obviously that isn't the case. For Bavaria, Religion coupled with a sense of Bavarian supremacy might explain why this isn't the case, but that can't be said for BW. Swabians are mostly Protestants and at least I'd consider them to be more humble. What's also interesting is how different individual parties are in different areas, especially the Greens. The Greens in BW are very strong compared to the rest of the country, but they're also very conservative. The next closest party would in many cases be the CDU. You could call them Christian Democrats with a consciousness if you want to be positive, or very naive Christian Democrats if you want to be negative. Now compare that to the Greens in the North who are a lot closer to the extreme left than to anything conservative. To me it's really surprising that in Hamburg, CDU and Greens get along at all...I mean the GAL are borderline communists compared to the Greens in BW. But I guess the thirst for power is enough to keep everybody peaceful...
Since when is Fürth a district of Nuremberg? http://www.wahl-fuerth.de/BW2005ZS/wahl.html There's no other city in Bavaria where the CSU always gets worse results.
Hmm, it seems that religion/confession is really playing a bigger role than one might expect these days. But I hope that @ benztown is smart enough not to compare the Sozis with the Nazis (whose party NSDAP was founded in the catholic Munich, btw.) now... Btw: If you have a look at the last election results from 2005 and compare them to the current polls, you wonder where the FDP is getting their gains from. I thought it would be CDU/CSU voters ... but as we see, the current polls for the Conservatives are almost identical with their result from 2005. Does this mean that the SPD lost votes not only to "Die Linke" and Greens, but also to the FDP?? That seems totally unreal to me! So the SPD must have either lost voters to CDU, whereas CDU voters went to FDP ... or something is totally wrong with all these polls. We'll see... Bonne nuit.
I'd say that the FDP indeed got its gains from unhappy CDU voters. But at the same time, the CDU could win over former SPD voters. I mean the SPD is losing on all fronts. On the left, they're losing to the Linke, on the center, they're losing to the Greens and on the right, they're losing to the CDU. But also keep in mind that the pollsters in Germany don't exactly have a stellar track record. Speaking of which, here are the latest polls from today: Allensbach: CDU/CSU: 35% SPD: 22.5% FDP: 13% Greens: 13% Linke: 11.5% Forsa: CDU/CSU: 35% SPD: 21% FDP: 14% Greens: 10% Linke: 14%
Anybody here not watching the duel "Merkel vs Steinmeier"? http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/27/0,1872,7602939_idDispatch:8934437,00.html
Why would I watch the coalition discussing their politics if I already made up my mind on whom to vote for?
Even someone who doesn't know whom to vote for shouldn't watch. It's kinda like a "who's the biggest dwarf" contest. Random election related video of the day: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3j09mYUXnA"]YouTube - JU Hymne - Die JU wird immer sein (Junge Union / CDU)[/ame]
I will not be watching the duel, as the Simpsons Movie is on Prosieben. Anyone care to summarize it afterwards, so I can know if anything of substance poked its head into the usual nonsense?
Did you expect a thriller or violent dispute? After all, both have been coalition partners for 4 years and respect each other. It's nice to see that Angela Merkel obviously has so much in common with the Social Democrats (I always knew that she's in the wrong party. Why does she need to form a coalition with the FDP? Well, her argument was: "We did a pretty good job during the last 4 years, but a black/yellow coalition would be the better option for the current economic crisis". Well, let's wait up wether the voters agree with her... Btw: According to diverse polls, Frank-Walter Steinmeier benefited from the "duel" ... ähm "duet". http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,648715,00.html Bonne nuit.