Nanwe's Maps and Graphics Thread

[Nanwe]

Now it is the turn for the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which as you can see usually got pretty even results throughout the country. The party's strongholds appear to be in the suburban areas of the country's large cities, in cities like Wassenaar, the wealthiest municipality to this day in the Netherlands, next to The Hague. The areas where it got the least percentage of votes were rural Limburg, in North Limburg.

 

[Nanwe]

If I can design a nice logo based off a carnation, expect soon-ish a description of the ČSDSD (the social-democrats).

​

The Czechoslovak Republican Party (Czecho-Slovak: Československá republikánská strana; Hungarian: Republikánus párt; Rusyn: Чехословацька pепубліканська партія, romanized: Čehoslovacʹka republikans'ka partija; Yiddish: רעפובליקאנער פארטיי, romanized: Refublikner fartej; ČRS) is a conservative-liberal, agrarian political party in Czechoslovakia. The party was established in 1922 shortly after Czechoslovakia's independence from the merger of the Czech Agrarian Party and the Slovak National Republican and Peasant Party. Founded as an agrarian party advocating land reform and protectionism, the party has moved ideologically towards economically-liberal positions, like a defence of free-market economics, and become the main party of the Czechoslovak centre-right. The party maintains close ties with its German-speaking sister party, the Agrarian League (Bund der Landwirte).

Although coming second behind the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party in the elections of 1920, the split between the party's left, who went on to found the Communist Party in 1922, and the rest of the party allowed the Republican Party to become the largest single political force in the 1920s and 1930s, forming part of every government between 1920 and 1943 and successively presiding the Council of Ministers between 1922-1926 and again from 1926 until 1943. The party would sit outside of government for most of the period 1943-1961, returning to the cabinet in the Laušman II cabinet, the so-called Constitutional Reform Government. Today, the party has displaced National Unification and the Czechoslovak Liberal Party as the main centre-right force in the country, providing several major Prime Ministers such as Antonín Švehla, Milan Hodža, Jozef Lettrich or Petr Farský.

In the 2017 general election, the party obtained 38 seats out of 300, becoming the second-largest party in the Chamber of Deputies. The party also holds 12 seats (of 80) in the Senate and is the sole party, together with the social democrats, to be represented in all four state diets. The party's political influence is strongest in the Subcarpathian Rus, eastern Slovakia and rural Bohemia.

The Republican Party is the mother organisation of the Union of the Republican Youth (JRD), the Union of Republican Academics (USRA), the Chamber of Landlords and Smallholders (DDM), the Union of Agricultural and Forestry Employees (OJZLZ), the Central Association of Public Servants and Teachers (USUaU) and the USVZ cooperative. It is a founding member of the International Agrarian Bureau, together with various other agrarian parties.

Here are the logos used in the Subcarpathian Rus:

 

[Nanwe]

I'm getting a very Nordic vibe from that. Nice.

Thanks! Interestingly, the four-leafed clover was also the symbol of the interwar agrarian parties in Eastern Europe (and of the Green International), it's just the only countries with agrarian parties that weren't crushed by the Communists were the Nordics.

So these are some ideas for the social democrats' logo:

 

[Nanwe]

This monstruosity is 1 MB in size, but it's hyper-detailed, so it was worth it.

Note, here Jewish means people who identified as Jewish in ethnic terms, not religious ones. Foe that reason many Jews in Bohemia and Moravia identified as either Czechoslovak or German. In any case, a map of the breakdown of each major ethnic group will follow suit as well as one with the main religious groups.

Also, the map in Bohemia and Moravia uses the administrative districts for the purpose of homogeneity, however, I also have data and maps to draw the judicial districts (smaller units, typically any admin. district had from 1 to 4).

 

[Nanwe]

Religions' map of Czechoslovakia, according to the 1930 census.

Religious adherence to the Catholic Church in Bohemia was very weak, even among self-professed Catholics. Even for devout Catholics and even in Moravia, Czech national culture was deeply tied to the Hussite heresy, and Jan Hus was revered as a father of the nation, regardless of his religious inclinations. As such, over the 1920s and 1930s, more and more Czechs would move away from the Church towards the newly-created Czechoslovak Church, various Neo-Hussite groups are identify as 'non-religious'.

Needless to say, relations between the Church and the Czechoslovak state were not easy in the beginning, given the anti-clerical or secular predilections of the main Czech parties (with the exception of the Czechoslovak People's Party) and their idolization of the Hussite movement. As a result, relations were very tense, although the state was not laïque or officially secular due to opposition from the CSL and the Slovak People's Party during the constitutional drafting period. In 1928, Benes and the papal Nunzio signed a 'modus vivendi', short of a concordat but a decent enough agreement to normalize relations.

The Czechoslovak Church is an interesting thing. It was founded in 1919 as a splinter of the Catholic Church. Originally a sort of modernist Catholic Church, advocating lay participation in rituals, the use of Czech in the liturgy and the Bible, the Church would also soon come to adopt elements drawn from Hussite tradition, other Protestant traditions and even Orthodoxy. The Czechoslovak Church was sort of the 'national' church in a way, as it was very closely linked to people like Masaryk or Benes, among other major politicians of the First Czechoslovak Republic. The Czechoslovak Church was, despite its name, a Czech and especially Bohemian phenomenon.

The Augsburg Confession churches (for there were 2, the Silesian one, mostly Polish, and the Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia) were Lutheran churches. The Reformed Church of Czechoslovakia was a Calvinist church, mostly ethnically Hungarian, and a splinter of the Hungarian Reformed Church.

About Jews, whereas Jews in Bohemia and Moravia as well as a good chunk of Slovakia belonged to the more secular, reformist strands, the Jews of eastern Slovakia and especially in the Subcarpathian Rus where Hassidic jews, and many times actively hostile to the work/presence of Zionists and secularized Jews. Many of them had crossed the Carpathian Mountains in the 17th and 18th centuries from Poland or Russia.

Rusyns were predominantly Greek Orthodox with a significant minority of 'Russian' Orthodox. Many Greek Catholic priests had enjoyed good relations with the pre-1920 Hungarian state, and as such as the Greek Catholic hierarchy was very suspected of being Magyarones (pro-Hungarian fifth column). For that reason, the Czechoslovak state encouraged people to become Orthodox. That went as far as having the Czechoslovak state organize the Eparchy of Mukacevo and Presov, attached to the Serbian Orthodox Church, due to historical ties and the fact that Russia and Ukraine were communist states. This was also supposed to help the Ukrainophile and Russophile elements of the Rusyn nationalist elites and help them reach the people of the region, at the time very backwards.

 

[Nanwe]

Trying out the new style for the maps. The circles indicate every city with a population over 20,000 that wasn't a statutory city (that is, a city-district). Statutory cities as of 1930 were Prague (under its own, special law), Brno, Olomouc, Bratislava, Kosice, Uzhorod and Mukacevo.

And this is the map of the share of the population that were members of the Czechoslovak Church. More maps to follow.

 

[Nanwe]

Now for Jews (as religious group, not self-identified ethnic group):

 

[Nanwe]

Ethnic map now, showing the German minority's whereabouts.

 

[Nanwe]

A map of Hungarians now. Hungarians were basically non-existent anywhere outside of southern Slovakia and south-western Ruthenia. The districts in white in Moravia and Bohemia is where there were 0 Hungarians, in absolute numbers.

Compared to the last pre-WWI Hungarian census, the number of urban Hungarians had diminished, this can be attributed to three factors, (1) the migration of close to 100,000 Hungarians to Hungary after 1920, (2) the identity switch of ethnically-mixed individuals from Hungarian to (Czecho-)Slovak and (3) the identity switch of Hungarian Jews.

Hungarians represented 17.79% of the population in Slovakia and 15.97% in the Subcarpathian Rus. The vast majority were Roman Catholics (63.22%), with a significant minority of members of the Reformed Church (i.e. Calvinists), who were 27.44% of all Hungarians. Calvinist Hungarians, reflecting demographic patterns in Hungary, mostly lived in eastern Slovakia and in Ruthenia. Indeed, 60% of all Hungarians in Ruthenia were Calvinists.

Around 3.8% of Hungarians were Greek Catholics (12.4% in Ruthenia, 2.1% in Slovakia), 2.9% were members of the Augsburg Confession Church in Slovakia and the Subcarpathian Church (i.e. Lutherans) and 2.3% were Jewish (5.1% in Ruthenia, 1.6% in Slovakia).

 

[Nanwe]

As with everything else in Czechoslovakia, ethnic differentiation also marked religion. This is nowhere truer than when it came to Protestantism, so these are some maps of the country's main protestant groups:

The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia was the single-largest protestant church in Czechoslovakia, with 2.77% of the country's population being members. The church was doctrinally Lutheran and was a mostly Slovak church. 12.02% of all citizens from Slovakia were members. Despite the name, only 0.22% of all people living in Ruthenia were affiliated.

Within Slovakia, 86.44% of its members were (Czecho-)Slovak, 8.35% were Germans and 5.06% were Hungarian. As a whole, 14.58% of all ethnic Slovaks were members of the church, compared to 21.60% of all Slovak Germans.

Interestingly, members of this group were overrepresented in national politics. Whereas Catholics tended to associate with the pro-autonomy and Catholic Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, Protestant Slovaks usually joined the Czechoslovakist, centralist parties, and as a result, usually Slovak members of the country's main parties were drawn from this community, over-representing them especially in the Council of Ministers. Nearly all the appointed Slovak ministers from 1920 until 1938 were Protestants. The only Slovak Prime Minister of the First Czechoslovak Republic, Milan Hodzva (Agrarian) was indeed a Lutheran.

The Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren is/was the result of the 1919 merger of various Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian Reformed and Lutheran churches. It was the second-largest protestant denomination, at 2.02% of the country's population (2.82% in Bohemia and 2.55% in Moravia-Silesia, negligible elsewhere).

This was a Czech church, 99.75% of all members in Bohemia were Czech; and 99.35% in Moravia-Silesia. As a result, 4.22% of all Bohemian Czechs were members, as were 3.45% of all Moravo-Silesian Czechs.

​

The Reformed Christian Church of Czechoslovakia was created in 1920 as a split from the Reformed Church in Hungary. This church was doctrinally Calvinist (i.e. Reformed) and drew its members mainly from the Hungarians living in eastern Slovakia and particularly in Ruthenia. In this way, it reflected the west-east divide in Hungary itself between Catholics and Calvinists.

4.38% of all Slovaks were members of the church, as were 9.77% of all Ruthenians. Of these, the vast majority were Hungarians (86.74% in Slovakia, 97.22% in Ruthenia) with a small number of ethnic Slovak followers. The Reformed Church was the dominant church among Hungarians in Ruthenia (59.47%), but not in Slovakia, where only 1 in 5 Hungarians were members. Overall, 27.44% of the country's Hungarians were members.

Now it's time for the so-called 'German Evangelicals'. German Evangelicals were the members of the German Evangelical Church in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia (DEKiMBS), unlike other German 'evangelical' churches, DEKiMBS was not a merger of Calvinist and Lutheran traditions, but a strictly Lutheran one. The DEKiMBS was created in 1919 as a successor church to the Evangelical Church of Austria, which up until 1918 also contained Czech-speaking Lutherans who would form the Czech Brethren (see above).

German protestantism was weak in Czechoslovakia, with the exception of the district of As, where 56.59% of the population identified as 'German evangelicals'. Otherwise, Germans were the most consistently Catholic group in the country. 4.22% of all Germans in Bohemia were members, as were 2.9% in Moravia-Silesia, and 0.80% and 0.59% in Slovakia and Ruthenia respectively.

​

The Silesian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession was a Lutheran church that mostly existed in Silesia, and particularly in easternmost Silesia, in the Czechoslovak part former territories of the Duchy of Teschen during Austrian times, which happened to be ethnically Polish.

The Church barely existed outside Moravia-Silesia, and even there, its presence was mostly limited to two administrative districts. 1.31% of all Moravo-Silesians were members. Of these, the majority (64.47%) were Polish, and about a third were ethnically Czechoslovak. However, only 33% of all the Poles in Moravia-Silesia (and 30.1% nationally) were members of the church, as the majority were Catholics (Poles gotta Pole).

 

[Nanwe]

So this map came out very dark, but there was little I could do given the stark differences in terms of numbers of Catholics between Ruthenia and the rest of the country.

Roman Catholicism was the dominant, 'unifying' religion of the First Czechoslovak Republic. And I put 'unifying' in quotes, because it was far from that. Indeed, the association of Roman Catholicism with the centuries of Austrian oppression following the Hussite defeat at the battle of White Mountain meant that most Bohemian Czechs (and to a lesser degree Moravian ones) may have been nominally Catholics, but many held laïque or outright anti-clerical lines of thought, and many would switch religions after 1919, becoming Protestants, members of the Czechoslovak Church or just abandoning religion altogether.

Clerical vs. anti-clerical debates dominated the constitutional convention period, when the agrarians, national conservatives and the left parties wanted to impose a secular state and nationalist all religious education. Both the Czechoslovak People's Party and the Slovak People's Party opposed that. Ultimately a compromise was reached whereby the Constitution would just not talk about religion at all, and religious schools were nationalized in the Czech lands and only the non-Slovak ones in Slovakia (coincidentally most of them, but that's due to the pre-WWI Magyarisation policies). The issue of funding for the construction of religious vs. state schools in Slovakia would persist too.

Clerical vs. anticlerical conflicts would continue for the better part of the 1920s over various 'culture war'-style conflicts, for instance over whether to make a public holiday of Jan Hus Day, as most Czechoslovak parties defended, or that of Jan Nepomucký, a saint associated with the Counter-Reformation, defended by the HSLS. The Czechoslovak People's Party stood in the middle, denying Hus religious legitimacy, disliking the cult of Nepomucky but being in favor of Jan Hus' Day on the basis of his symbolism as a national liberator.

Relations with the Church were also fairly tense until the signature of a 'modus vivendi' in 1928.

In terms of demographics, 90.5% of all ethnic Germans were Catholics (90.6% in Bohemia, 94% in Moravia-Silesia, 70.1% in Slovakia, 96.1% in Ruthenia) followed by 74.5% of all ethnic Czechoslovaks (67.6% in Bohemia, 85.1% in Moravia-Silesia, 76.6% in Slovakia, and 66% in Ruthenia), 63.22% of all ethnic Hungarians were also Catholics (71.3% in Slovakia, 22.2% in Ruthenia).

Only 1.56% of all Ruthenians (Ukrainians and Russians are included in this category) were Catholics. 62% of all ethnic Poles were Catholics.

 

[Nanwe]

I think these would the last religious updates, excluding the irreligious ones. As it happens, they reinforce your point @Alex Richards as they really make Ruthenia (and Ruthenian-majority areas in north-eastern Slovakia) stand out.


So this is the map for Greek Catholicism, the dominant religion among ethnic Ruthenians.

In Ruthenia, it was the religion of 49.5% of all inhabitants, and the religion of 73.1% of all ethnic Ruthenians (who made up 91.7% of all its members), and of 12.4% of all ethnic Hungarians.

In Slovakia, 91.8% of all ethnic Ruthenians were members of the Greek Catholic Church, as were 18.4% of the land's ethnic Poles and 4.6% of all ethnic Slovaks. Interestingly, in Slovakia, due to the small number of Ruthenians, 51.4% of the church's members were ethnic Slovaks, Ruthenians were 40.9% of its members.

And here's the map of Eastern Orthodoxy, also a mostly Ruthenian religion, but minority except in two districts. Orthodoxy was favored by the Czechoslovak authorities as it was perceived as dogmatically close to Greek Catholicism but without its philohungarian inclinations. As a result, the number of Orthodoxs grew from below 1% in 1900 to about 15.5% in 1930.

It was also favoured by the small, secular intelligentsia of the region, who were often either Ukrainophile or Russophile. 24.6% of all ethnic Ruthenians in Subcarpathian Ruthenia were members.

As Moscow was the centre of an Atheist regime, the Orthodox Church in Ruthenia was a part of the Serbian Orthodox Church, since 1931.

 

[Nanwe]

Now it's the time for the map of 'non-denominational' or 'irreligious' people according to the 1930 map.

It was largely a Bohemian phenomenon, where over 10% of the people declared no religious affiliation, going as high as 30% in some urban areas of central Bohemia.

In ethnic terms, 89.3% of self-identified 'non-denominational' Bohemians were Czech, as were 91.8% of 'non-denominational' Moravo-Silesians. So irreligiosity was a clear ethnic Czech phenomenon, small in other ethnic groups and equally of very limited presence in Slovakia or Ruthenia.

 

[Nanwe]

So mapping the Slovak constituencies is going to take forever, as I need to delve into municipal boundaries' maps and that will take forever. So while I wait for the news of whether I'm hired and I need to move this week to Brussels, let me explain Czechoslovakia's electoral system.

General

Inspired by the electoral systems of Belgium and interwar Germany, the Czechoslovak electoral system featured three levels (skrutinium) of proportional representation that operated in slightly different fashions. The two chambers of the National Assembly, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate were made up of 300 and 150 members, respectively, elected every 6 and every 8 years respectively. In practice, however, both chambers were always elected simultaneously. In practice too, very few of the Chamber's legislatures lasted all 6 years, with elections held in 1920, 1925, 1929 ad 1935, only the 1929-1935 legislature lasted roughly what it was meant to.

Voting was mandatory for every man and woman over 21 but below 70. Overall, the elections can be considered to have been free and fair, with the potential exception of Ruthenia where it isn't unheard for the government authorities to favor anti-Hungarian parties. Indeed, one of the reasons why the election of 1920 wasn't held in Ruthenia until 1924 was precisely because many in Prague feared a Magyarone victory.

Elections were held on two days, on a Sunday for the first round, and a week later for the second and third rounds, although no one voted on these latter rounds. The time span was designed to give the parties time to draft candidate lists for these latter rounds. The party lists were closed lists.

Constituencies (Chamber)

For the election of 1920, the country was divided into a total of 23 constituencies, electing from 6 o 45 deputies. The numbers of seats that were allocated to each constituency was not exactly based on population - although it did play a large role. According to the authors of the electoral law, other factors like the historical under-representation of Czech voters also played a role in the over-representation of, for instance, the Bohemian central plateau, or the under-representation of the Hungarians in Slovakia (grouped into the Nové Zamky and Kosice constituencies). In theory, it was also designed to reflect future demographic trends as the electoral law had no way of automatically re-allocating the seats.

This last, official reason to me appears to be basically false, the Czech Lands had far lower birth rates than Slovakia, not to mention feudal Ruthenia, and on average, it was better represented. The table below shows the ratio of citizen per seat, including both voting age and underage citizens. That is one of the reasons why Ruthenia also shows such a discrepancy with the rest of the country - it was a far younger part of the country.

In 1920, no elections would be held in either the Tesin or the Uzhorod constituencies. In the case of Tesin, because at the time of the election, the territory of the former Duchy of Teschen was disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland, resulting in a short war that was ended through a League of Nations-mediated settlement and a partition of the territory. For 1925, the Czechoslovak part of Tesin was added to the Moravska Ostrava constituency. Elections in the administrative district of Hlucin (Mor. Ostrava) couldn't be held either due to its disputed status, and as a result, in 1920, the constituency would have elected 13, rather than 14 seats.

1920 was also the only time the Prague constituency existed, as in the successive elections, the constituency was divided into two, Prague A and Prague B, each electing 24 seats each.

In practice, in 1920, only 281 representatives were elected and sat between 1920 and 1924, 290 from 1924 until 1925.

​

First Round

The number of theoretically-allocated seats per constituency's main role was limited. They served to calculate the quota of each constituency. This quota was Hare - the number of valid votes casts divided by the number of seats. The resulting number was always rounded down. This number was known as the 'election number'.

In the first round, there were no thresholds for parties to cross, and any party that met the quota would get a seat. This is pretty straightforward. Because of the differences in voters:seats ratio, the election number could vary significantly, from 17,679 in Liptovsky Sväty Mikulas to 27,743 in Kosice.

​

All valid votes from each party would thus be allocated on the basis of these quotas. Unallocated seats and votes would pass to the second (and ultimately third rounds). This meant that in practice, each constituency elected less seats than it was theoretically allocated, on average only 66% of all seats were allocated on the first round, with great variation, going from only 50% in Hradec Kralové to 86.67% in Prague.

This would become a significant political issue later on, as the Slovak People's Party resented losing 'Slovak' seats due to the national character of the second and third rounds.

Second Round

All the remaining votes that had not been enough to obtain a seat and all the unallocated seats from the first round were grouped together. The second round was held a week after the first round, giving time to the parties to create candidate lists from candidates who hadn't been elected on the first round from across the country.

The way that the second round operated diverges somewhat from the first round. For starters, the second round was done through a single, national constituency. The second round also featured a threshold - in order to be able to participate in this second allocation of seats, a party would have had to obtain at least one seat on the first round or 20,000 votes in at least one constituency. The United Jewish Party, for instance, had failed to gain any seats in the first round and never obtained more than 11,000 votes in a constituency. As a result, it would not participate.

The quota (electoral number) for the second round was also calculated differently. Instead of taking into account all the valid votes cast, it only took into account the remaining votes of parties that met the threshold and divided it by the number of remaining seats plus one (Hagenbach-Bischoff quota), making it slightly more favorable to larger parties than the Hare quota used on the first round. Like on the first round, the resulting number was rounded down.

In 1920, the electoral number was 20,574 for the Chamber of Deputies. In the second round, there were 83 seats to be allocated, of which 77 were, and the 6 left would be allocated on the third and final round.

The electoral law stipulated that there would be no third round in the - rare - case that all remaining seats had been allocated on the second round.

Third Round

In the case that after applying the second round quota to the remaining seats, there were still unassigned seats, then these were allocated to the parties according to the largest remainder system.

This would thus look something similar to this:

 

[Nanwe]

So this is my first foray into the world of Weimar Republic elections - the map of the Hessian elections of 1921 and 1924. Simple enough electoral system - a single constituency with closed lists electing all 70 members through D'Hont and without thresholds.

The political system was dominated by the social-democratic SPD, which in both elections obtained over a third of the vote. In comparison to the SPD, the vote share of the Independent Social Democrats (in 1921 only) and the KPD combined never surpassed 6% of the vote.

The centre-to-right-wing vote was very divided owing to the social cleavages of the People's State. Zentrum, the Christian democratic party of Catholics was the second-largest party in the Landtag in both elections, although it only obtained 16-17% of the vote. The party's voters were concentrated on the provinces of Starkerburg (16.3%, 15.1%) and especially Rheinhessen (30.4%, 26.7%) in the southern section of the state while its vote share in the northern province of Oberhessen was much lower (5%, 5.2%).

Rural, Protestant Hessen, and especially Oberhessen voted "overwhelmingly" for the Hessian Farmers' Federation (Hessischer Bauernbund, HBB) which despite its name was not an agrarian party but a right-wing populist party that, like its Saxon equivalents, heavily used anti-Semitic rhetoric and was sociologically and ideologically close to the DNVP. The party's electoral stronghold was the northern province of Oberhessen were it obtained 32.8% and 30.2% of the vote in 1921 and 1924 respectively. Indeed, the DNVP's areas of core support were roughly the same as the HBB's.

By contrast, urban Protestant Hessen was the stronghold of the two liberal parties, the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) and the right-liberal German People's Party (DVP). Of the two, the DVP was the strongest, and it was particularly strong in the more urban districts of Worms (33.1% and 26.1%) and Darmstadt (31.1% and 23%). But curiously, not Mainz. The party was strongest in the southern provinces of the People's State, and especially in Rhein-Hessen.

The DDP's strongest districts were not the same as the DVP's - although it was stronger in cities overall. Its best-performing districts were Alzey, Bigen and Oppenheim, districts with low population, which I guess would indicate more a rural character, so I don't know what could have caused that result.

In 1924, the then-banned Nazi party, which did not run in 1921, ran as a different entity, known as the National Socialist Freedom Movement (Nationalsozialistische Freiheitsbewegung, NSFB). It obtained 1.36% of the vote and one seat, that it would lose in 1927. It support was quite homogenous across all three provinces.

And 1924:

Following this election, Zentrum politician, Otto von Brentano di Tremezzo tried to form a 'bourgeois' government composed of Zentrum, DDP, DVP and HBB to replace the Weimar coalition government that had governed the state since 1919. In the investiture vote, von Brentano obtained 34 seats whereas the SPD candidate, the incumbent Carl Ulrich obtained 32 seats. As von Brentano failed to obtained the majority support of the Landtag, he could not form a government.

As a result, after two months of negotiations, Zentrum, DDP and SDP reached a new agreement and formed another Weimar coalition government, led by Ulrich.

 

[Nanwe]

And I could find the data for the Hessian 1919 Constituent Assembly election after all.

The HVP (Hessische Volkspartei, Hessian People's Party) was the name of the DNVP in this election.

 

[Nanwe]

Decided to give a go to a potential colour scheme for (some) Czechoslovak parties and also endulge in an easy map. This is the result of the provincial election of 1935 in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. The Provincial Assembly was formed by 18 members, 12 of which were elected in an at-large constituency and one third was appointed by the central government in Prague.

The Agrarians (RSZML) obtained more seats in the elected part of the assembly members than the Communists (the KSČ) because the party ran three separate lists that donated their votes to the largest one in the seat allocation. If they had all ran together from the get-go, the party would have been the largest.

The Czechoslovak parties had a limited presence in the region, with the exception of the Agrarians. The Czechoslovak Social Democrats (ČSDSD) obtained a single elected seat whereas the other main ones (the quasi-fascist National Union, the left-liberal National Socialists and the Catholic People's Party) had limited following.

Two Hungarian parties obtained representation, the Provincial Christian Socialist Party (OKSzP) and the Hungarian National Party (MNS, MNP in Hungarian). As you can imagine, the former was more moderate whereas the latter was more radically nationalistic. Both parties, like the Rusyn autonomist AZS were financed by Budapest.

Lastly, there was the Ruthenian (National) Autonomous Party (RAS), better known as the Fencivoks after the party leader, Štefan Fencik (Фенцик Степан) a far-right Rusyn nationalist who was also anti-Semitic. The party cooperated at the national level with the National Union but ran separately in the provincial election.

The Agrarians, together with the Czechoslovak Social Democratic, National Socialist and People's Parties formed the assembly majority.

The results are taken from here: Moravian Library

 

[Nanwe]

Czechoslovak Political Landscape in 1920: A few notes

One of the interesting aspects of Czechoslovak politics, particularly in the Czech lands, was how the same social cleavages cut within each ethnic group in a similar fashion, and how the way that Czechs and Germans voted in Bohemia was fairly similar, and the same was true in Moravia (& Silesia). So for instance:

Social Democracy:

Both Czechs and Germans had strong social democratic parties that in 1920 were about to split up 60:40 between socdems and communists [1].

So, for instance, you had the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party (ČSDSD) and the German Social Democratic Workers' Party in Czechoslovakia (DSAP) as Marxist reformist parties. Both parties were ideologically very similar, with the exception of the issue of self-determination, as they both had been parts of the same party until the 1900s. After 1926, the two parties would begin cooperating quite closely, and in fact, their own respective trade unions would even merge.

There was also the SSČLP, a small, more Czech nationalist outfit that would merge back with the post-split Social Democrats after 1923.

Non-Marxist Socialism:

Then you had a strong Czech non-Marxist, socialist party with nationalist leanings and deeply tied to nationalist civil society. These were the Czechoslovak Socialist Party (ČSS) and the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP). Now, the ČSS had both quasi-left-liberals but also strasserites, but the party would force the latter out, whereas its German equivalent was basically dominated by pre-left-fascists. That is to say, the DNSAP in the 1920s was nominally democratic outwards (and internally was democratic, eschewing a Führerprinz organisation) and its ideology was economically corporatist, anti-Marxist, "moderately" anti-Semitic, and pro-federalist (being pro-Anschluss could get you banned). In terms of sociology, the ČSS was predominantly lower-middle class, whereas the DNSAP.

Political Catholicism:

Then you had the parties of religious Catholics, who were way stronger in Moravia than in Bohemia. These were the Czechoslovak People's Party (ČSL) and the German Christian-Social People's Party (DCVP). In 1920, the future Hlinka's Slovak People's Party ran with the ČSL. In 1920, this helped boost the vote share of the party.

Agrarianism:

Then you had the agrarian parties, stronger in the more secular countryside of Bohemia. The agrarian parties combined social conservatism, pro-market positions with a desire for land reform and some degree of social welfare (particularly inasmuch as it protected farmers). There was the Republican Party of the Czechoslovak Countryside (RSČV) which merged with the Slovak Agrarian Party in 1922, becoming the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants (RSZML) on the Czechoslovak side, and the Farmers' League (BdL) on the German side.

Liberalism & National-liberalism:

Next up there were the national parties. On the Czechoslovak side, you had the ČsND, the Czechoslovak National Democracy, the direct descendant of the 19th century Young Czechs party. The party was the most Czech chauvinist and the most closely associated with big business. It was quite socially conservative too. During the 1930s, the party would drift from national liberal and national conservative positions to corporatist authoritarianism and quasi-fascism. Then there was also the Czechoslovak Traders' Party (ČŽOS), which thought of itself as a party in defence of the urban middle classes opposed to both trade unions and big business interests, and was less dogmatically nationalist than the National Democrats. The ČZOS cooperated with the agrarians in parliament.

On the German side, you had the German Democratic Freedom Party (DDFP), a small progressive left-liberal party with a similar base to the German DDP, including many German-speaking Jews. Among its MPs was Kafka's brother. The other, liberal party was the German National Party (DNP), which was a national-liberal party but erred more on the national than the liberal side of things. The party was, like the DNSAP, the most opposed to the existence of the Czechoslovak state and advocated for self-determination. The party's voters were largely upper-class Germans.

In 1920, the DNP and the DNSAP ran together as the German Electoral Coalition (Deutsche Wahlgemeinschaft, DWG).

Slovakia:

In Slovakia, politics were somewhat less (or more?) confusing. This is because, unlike the Czech lands, there was a much more limited parliamentary tradition in Slovakia, where politics had been far more centralised in Budapest and much more elitist owing to Budapest's hyper-restrictive franchise.

So basically, on the Slovak side of things, most of the Czechoslovak parties developed their Slovak wings. Some of them, like the Social Democrats essentially lost the entire party apparatus to the Communists when the party split so they had to start anew.

As for 'indigenous' parties, there was the Slovak National and Peasants' Party (SNaRS), the merger of the Slovak National Party (SNS) and the Slovak agrarians. The party's delegation in Prague split up in 1922, between the Slovak nationalists and the agrarians. The Agrarians would become the Slovak wing of the RSZML.

On the Hungarian side of Slovak politics, there were 3 parties running in 1920.

First, there was the Hungarian and German Christian‐Socialist Party (the future OKSzP), the main party of the Hungarian minority. The party was politically Catholic and the most willing to cooperate with the new authorities in Prague, although it would slowly move towards more hostile positions as a result of internal conflicts and Budapest's influence on the party.

Then, the Hungarian-German Social Democratic Party (MNSDP, UDSDP). The party would last a few months after the election, as the majority of the party defected to join the Slovak wing of the KSČ. The rump party would split, with its German members becoming DSAP's German wing, and its remaining Hungarian members forming the Hungarian Social Democratic Party (MSDP), which would merge in 1926 with the ČSDSD Slovak wing.

Lastly, there was the Hungarian Party of Smallholders (MKP, the full name was "National Hungarian Smallholders' and Landowners' Party"). The party started out as the Hungarian agrarian party but would radicalise, like all other Hungarian parties, over the course of the 1920s and 1930s becoming essentially an irredentist, nationalist party.

Honorary mention to the Jewish Party - which I'm sure you can guess what its political programme was about - which obtained nearly 80,000 votes across Czechoslovakia. But as it failed to obtain 20,000 votes or one seat in at least one constituency, it didn't cross the threshold to be able to obtain seats in the second and third rounds, so it got 0 seats.

Trade Unionism

The Czech lands, and Bohemia in particular, were among the most industrialised parts of Europe at the time. The Sudeten was home to an export-oriented good-focused, consumer light industry aimed at exporting towards the greater Austrian-Hungarian Empire. After the fall of the Empire, all these German-owned industries suffered considerably due to the creation of new tariffs. Meanwhile, the Bohemian central plains were home to a largely Czech-owned heavy industry, particularly engineering and chemicals.

As a result, the share of unionised workers, both white- and blue-collar was among the highest in the world at the time. Between 1920 and 1935, the share of unionised workers and professionals hovered between 35 and 60% of the workforce. And basically all parties had their own union wings.

This is some data from (iirc) 1931, when trade union membership rates were at its lowest - 35% of the workforce.



As you can observe, even pro-big business parties like the National Democrats had their own trade unions.

[1] Even then it's important to note that until 1929, the KSČ was a communist party but not one fully controlled by Moscow. The purge of the party's leader, Haken, and his executive and their replacement by Gottwald was the coup de grâce.

 

[Nanwe]

Since today I have to vote again, here's the map under my Swedish-inspired electoral system for Spain.

The results are as follows (out of 400 seats: 354 elected in constituencies, 6 by citizens abroad, 40 compensatory seats):

PSOE: 124 seats
PP: 69 seats
Cs: 66 seats
UP: 59 seats
Vox: 42 seats
ERC: 16 seats
JxCAT: 8 seats
EAJ-PNV: 7 seats
EH Bildu: 3 seats
CC: 2 seats
N+: 2 seats
Compromís: 1 seat
PRC: 1 seat

Majorities (201/400):
PSOE+UP+Com+PRC: 185 seats
- Majority+PNV+ERC: 208 seats
PP+Cs+Vox+N+: 179 seats
PSOE+Cs+CC+PRC: 193 seats

So the more proportional result would have weakened the result for the left and put the country in a (even more than OTL) three-way blockade, as a left-wing minority would be weaker as it would need the support of ERC more so than OTL, and a PSOE-Cs centrist coalition (unlike OTL) lacked sufficient support to form a majority coalition even adding in pork-barrel-focused centrist parties.

 

[Nanwe]

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Bohemia (/boʊˈhiːmiə/, Czech: Čechy, [ˈt͡ʃɛxɪ]; German: Böhmen, [ˈbøːmən]), officially the State of Bohemia (Czech: Země Česká, [ˈzɛmɲɛ ˈt͡ʃɛskaː]; German: Land Böhmen, [lant ˈbøːmən]) is a state of Czechoslovakia, located in the country's west. Bohemia borders Germany to the north and west, and Austria to the south-east and the Czechoslovak state of Moravia-Silesia to the east. Bohemia's borders are mostly marked by mountain ranges such as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, and the Krkonoše, a part of the Sudetes range; the Bohemian-Moravian border roughly follows the Elbe-Danube watershed. With an estimated area of 52,062 square kilometres (20,101 sq mi), Bohemia is the largest Czechoslovak state, comprising roughly 37 per cent of the country's landmass. With an estimated population slightly over ten million inhabitants, Bohemia is also the most populous Czechoslovak state. It is also the most densely populated state in the country. Bohemia's main cities are Prague (its capital as well as Czechoslovakia's capital and largest city), Plzeň and Liberec (Reichenberg in German).

Bohemia was a duchy of Great Moravia, later an independent principality, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently a part of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Austrian Empire. After World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state, the total of Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia, defying claims of the German-speaking inhabitants that regions with German-speaking majority should be included in the Republic of German-Austria.

Bohemia is the economic and cultural heart of Czechoslovakia, with the largest GDP of any Czechoslovak state as well as the highest GDP per capita. Bohemia contributes 49% of the country's total gross domestic product. As one of the earliest industrialised regions in Europe, the state has developed into an industrial, financial and technological hub in Central Europe.

The state is officially bilingual. Both German and Czech are co-official languages for the state level, although the situation is more complicated at the district level. German-speakers moved into modern-day Bohemia in large numbers beginning in the mid-13th century at the behest of the Přemyslid rulers. Today, German-speaking Bohemians are clustered in the so-called Sudetenland, areas bordering Germany and Austria. Czech-speakers primarily reside in the Central Bohemian Plain and in the south and east of the state. Czech-speakers make up slightly over two-thirds of the population, whereas German-speakers constitute about 30 per cent of the state's population.

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Moravia-Silesia (/məˈreɪviə saɪˈliːʒə/, Czech: Morava-Slezsko, [ˈmorava ˈslɛsko]; German: Mähren-Schlesien, [ˈmɛːʁən ˈʃleːzi̯ən]), officially the State of Moravia-Silesia (Czech: Země Moravskoslezská, [ˈzɛmɲɛ moravskoslɛskaː]; German: Land Mähren-Schlesien, [lant ˈmɛːʁən ˈʃleːzi̯ən]) is a state of Czechoslovakia, located in the eastern half of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown. Moravia-Silesia is formed by the historical territories of Moravia, Czech Silesia and the historically Prussian Hlučín region. Moravia-Silesia borders, clockwise, Germany to the north, Poland to the east, Slovakia to the south-east, Austria to the south and Bohemia to the west. Moravia-Silesia's landmass is approximately 26,808 square kilometres (10,351 sq mi), making it third-largest state in Czechoslovakia by landmass. Moravia-Silesia has an estimated population of slightly over 5 million people, making it the third-most populous state and the second-most densely populated. The main cities of Moravia-Silesia are the state's capital city, Brno (Brünn in German), Ostrava (German: Ostrau) and Olomouc (Olmütz in German), the historical capital of Moravia until 1641.

The medieval and early modern Margraviate of Moravia was a crown land of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown from 1348 to 1918, an imperial state of the Holy Roman Empire from 1004 to 1806, a crown land of the Austrian Empire from 1804 to 1867, and a part of Austria-Hungary from 1867 to 1918. Silesia was formed by various duchies under the sovereignty of the Polish crown until the territory was ceded to the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1335. From that date until 1772, Silesia was one of the Bohemian crown lands within the Holy Roman Empire. Most of Silesia was annexed by the King of Prussia under the Treaty of Berlin in 1742. Only the Duchy of Teschen, the Duchy of Troppau and the Duchy of Nysa remained under the control of the Bohemian crown and as such were known as the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia until 1918. After the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Moravia and Austrian-turned-Czech Silesia constituted two separate lands. In 1928, they were merged together.

Today, the state is well-known for its Catholic majority and conservative traditions. Moravia-Silesia is the second-wealthiest state in Czechoslovakia, with the third-largest gross domestic product but the second-highest GDP per capita, behind neighbouring Bohemia. Moravia is noted for its viticulture; it contains 94% of the Czech Republic's vineyards and is at the centre of the country's wine industry. Likewise, much of southern Moravia, particularly the Zlín region are home to a large manufacturing industry.

The state is officially bilingual. Both German and Czech are co-official languages for the state level, although the situation is more complicated at the district level. Polish is also co-official in the districts of Frystát and Český Těšín. German-speakers moved into modern-day Moravia and Silesia in large numbers beginning in the mid-13th century at the behest of the Přemyslid rulers. Today, German-speaking Moravo-Silesians are clustered in the so-called Sudetenland, areas bordering Germany, Poland and Austria. Czech-speakers primarily reside in the central areas of the state, although pockets of German-speakers exist elsewhere. Czech-speakers make up slightly below three-quarters of the population, whereas German-speakers constitute slightly over twenty per cent of the state's population. Compared to neighbouring Bohemia, the co-existence of German-speakers and Czech-speakers in Moravia and Silesia was considerably more peaceful.