A Bad Day for the Right in Hamburg

Germany's center-left Social Democratic party (SPD) and the Green party both had a good day in yesterday's state election in Hamburg. It was a very bad day for Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat party (CDU), who plummeted into third place with little more than 11% of the vote. It was also a very bad day for the extreme far-right AfD party, who only just managed to get over 5% of the vote.

You can explore the percentage of the vote won by each party in each electoral district on Hamburger Abendblatt's interactive map of the city state's 2020 election. The map allows you to view an overall map of the results (showing the winning party in each electoral district) and individual choropleth maps for each party. The individual party maps show the percentage of votes won by the party in each district. These individual maps are also annotated to show the three districts where each party gained the highest percentage of votes in the city.

The Hamburger Abendblatt's maps are great for showing the geographical support for each party. For example it is striking how support for the Green party is strongest in the city center and weaker in the city's suburbs. The left-wing Linke party, like the Greens, performed strongest in the center of Hamburg. The strong performance of the Green's and Linke in the center of Hamburg may be why the center-left SPD performed less well in the center than they did elsewhere in the city. The CDU's top three electoral districts are all in the south-east of the city.

If you select the drop-down menu under the vote share graph you can view each party's vote swing since the 2015 election. These swings tell a large part of the story in yesterday's election in Hamburg. The 11.9% increase in the Green vote and the minus 4.7% swing in the CDU vote explains how the Greens overtook the CDU to become the second biggest party in Hamburg. While the SPD remained Hamburg's biggest party overall their celebrations may be muted as the party actually saw a minus 6.6% drop in their vote.