Rebuilding the Berlin Wall

choropleth election map showing the CDU dominant in the west and the AfD winning in the east

In my round-up of 2025 German Election Maps, I commented on the "stark contrast between the results in former East Germany and the rest of the country." It was immediately apparent to most observers of last week's German election that there was a clear voting split along the old East-West German border. In the west, the Christian Democratic (CDU/CSU) party was triumphant, while in the eastern part of Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was dominant.

However, according to Data Journalism Studio, this split is not as clear-cut as it first appears on German election maps. In German Elections: Did the Eastern Bloc Vote Radically? Not Exactly, the Data Journalism Studio uses a scrollytelling story map to illustrate how the actual results were more nuanced than the simple east-west divide suggests.

cartogram map of the German election revealing an urban-rural political divide

By switching from a traditional choropleth map to a cartogram view, the Data Journalism Studio demonstrates that German voting patterns were influenced as much by population density as by the former East-West divide. A cartogram, which represents each electoral district as a single hexagon, reveals this different perspective. This visualization shows that in major eastern cities like Berlin and Leipzig, voters actually supported Die Linke rather than the AfD.

Further cartogram views, displaying party support across Germany, reveal that while the AfD performed well in the rural areas of the east, they did not perform well in the largest cities. Additionally, a cartogram map highlighting where the AfD gained votes since the previous election suggests that the AfD gained new voters quite evenly across all of Germany.