On Sunday Germany went to the polls. Angela Merkel won a fourth term, but the anti-immigrant nationalist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), won nearly 13% of the vote. That places a nationalist party in the German parliament for the first time since World War II.
A lot of the graphics I saw were straight-up bar charts of the final vote share. But Die Welt, a German paper, did have this piece with an interactive choropleth. There is nothing revolutionary in the map itself. But it does show how support for the AfD exhibits clear geographic patterns, namely large support in what was East Germany.
But the really nice part about the Die Welt piece is the interactive coalition builder at the end. They present several different possibilities. Unfortunately, I cannot read German, so the narrative on the page eludes me. But it was fun to explore the potentials. But with the SPD announcing it would go into opposition, we are not likely to see a grand coalition.
Credit for the piece goes to the Die Welt graphics department.
