Weimar Election Maps

[Middle-aged Europe]

That's Saxony where Hitler won in 1932, isn't it? Aren't the NPD strong there today?

No, that isn't Saxony. The brown areas on the 1932 map are Brandenburg, Thuringia, Pomerania and  Schleswig-Holstein.

Saxony was considered a stronghold of the SPD and the communists during the Weimar Republic.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Yes, and the NPD seems the be particularly strong in Saxony. However, it hasn't much to do with the way people voted in 1932 or something.

[Middle-aged Europe]

What electoral system did the Weimar Republic actually use?

Proportional representation w/ no thresholds IIRC

That's correct. Pure PR. No thresholds or direct seats. At least in Reichstag elections.


President: Popular election. If no candidate received more than 50%, a run-off was held with a simple plurality of votes being sufficient now.

Interestingly, candidates could be replaced between the two rounds. As a result, the candidates in the run-off weren't always the same candidates which had stood in the first round. In addition, all candidates from the first round could theoretically participate in the run-off too. So, no candidates were actually eliminated with the first round (except for those who chose to drop out or who where replaced by their respective parties).



Example - 1925 presidential election

First round
Karl Jarres (DVP, also endorsed by DNVP): 38.8%
Otto Braun (SPD): 29.0%
Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum): 14.5%
Ernst Thälmann (KPD): 7.0%
Willy Hellpach (DDP): 5.8%
Heinrich Held (BVP): 3.7%
Erich Ludendorff (NSDAP): 1.1%

Second round
Paul von Hindenburg (endorsed by DVP, DNVP, BVP and NSDAP): 48.3%
Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum, also endorsed by SPD and DDP): 45.3%
Ernst Thälmann (KPD): 6.4%

[Middle-aged Europe]

That's not quite right. There were regional level constituencies with a threshold of 60,000 votes, and seats won there were upped at a national level to proportionality, but parties could at maximum only double their regional tally there. So it wasn't quite proportional for smaller parties.

D'Oh! I thought I had it all covered.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Saxony State was never much of a Communist stronghold. THough Saxony Province (modern Sachsen-Anhalt, very approximately) was. As was Thuringia.

The differences between these entities were often marginal, however. In Reichstag elections, the KPD's share of vote tended to be a bit higher (between 0.5 and 3.0 percent) in the province of Saxony than in the state of Saxony.

However, the KPD always received higher percentages in the state of Saxony than they did nation-wide. So, the KPD was stronger in the province of Saxony than in the state of Saxony, but also stronger in the state of Saxony than in Germany as a whole.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Did Catholics vote overwhelmingly for Zentrum, or did they split their vote?

Ah, there is this standard reference work about voters in the Weimar Republic by Prof. Jürgen Falter... I will try to piece together what I think to remember from that.

SPD - Working class
KPD - Also workers as well as a big chunk of unemployment people during the depression
Zentrum - Catholics (independent of class)
DDP/DVP/DNVP - protestant middle/upper class
NSDAP - also mostly protestant middle class

Of course this is extremely generalized here. There were some Catholics who voted SPD or workers who voted NSDAP, they simply did it less frequently.