The German Election Candidates Map

On 24th September Germany will go to the polls to elect the members of the 19th Bundestag. The Berliner Morgenpost has created a fantastic visualization which helps to explain who the 2,559 candidates are, what they stand for and where they come from.

Each of the 2,559 candidates in the 2017 federal election are represented in the Alle 2559 Direktkandidaten – Wer sie sind, wofür sie stehen visualization by a colored dot. As you progress through the visualization these colored dots are continually rearranged to group the candidates by political party, by professional / occupational background, by gender, age and by place of birth.

The place of birth of all 2,559 candidates is shown by placing each of the colored dots on a Leaflet map. Unfortunately you can't zoom in on the map. Most candidates were born in Germany. However, because you can't zoom in on this big cluster of dots, it is impossible to view the geographical distribution of the candidates' birthplaces within Germany.

5.4 percent of candidates were born outside the borders of the Federal Republic. Unfortunately the inability to zoom in on the map places much more attention on these foreign born candidates. As these foreign born candidates are the only individual dots that you can make out on the map's default zoom layer they are the dots that you are most likely to interact with on the map - with the perhaps unintended consequence of emphasizing their 'foreignness'.