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Max's election maps and assorted others
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As I mentioned in other threads, last Saturday I visited the archive reading room in Jönköping, and came back with most of the resources needed to map most of their pre-1970 local elections. Now, like Växjö, the elections from before 1910 or so were nonpartisan at-large affairs, and so both very hard to map and uninteresting. Instead of bothering to trace all the old municipal boundaries I'm just going to start where things get interesting.
Jönköping's first ward division was introduced in 1909, and simply followed the local bodies of water (Vättern, Munksjön and the Taberg River) to trace a north-south line across the city's then-territory. This would at one point have been an equitable split, but industrialisation had led to huge growth most of which was in the west, around the matchstick factory and the Munksjö paper mill. So by 1909, this split already resulted in a 25-17 split between the west and east wards, which was dangerously uneven - 25 being the legal maximum number of seats possible to elect in a single ward at the time. So when the parish of Ljungarum, south of the city, was annexed into it the following year, a new division into three wards was drawn up, with the first ward covering most of the old east ward, the second straddling the Munksjön-Vättern canal and taking in the growing villa suburbs along the western shore of Vättern, and the third covering the workers' quarters along Munksjön's western shore as well as several more middle-class villa suburbs. This created a nearly-equal three-way split, and the council was increased from 42 to 45 seats, in part to divide more neatly into three.
These wards were not further divided into polling districts, which was hardly necessary anyway - turnout was extremely low due to the unequal voting system (see the first page of this very thread for a closer explanation of that), which made voting feel pointless (somewhat justifiably) for a lot of the poorer citizens who might qualify to vote but only get one vote as opposed to dozens for someone wealthier.
As an example of this, in a local history book I found a summary of the 1914 election results. It's worth noting immediately that elections were by halves at this point, so only 23 of the 45 seats were up - I haven't been able to find the composition of the other 22. Also, Jönköping's conservatives were divided into two different local parties, one of which (the Moderates) was allied to the Liberals in the coalition dubbed "Nykterhetens och sparsamhetens vänner" (The Friends of Temperance and Frugality), while the other stood a list of its own under the name Borgerliga valmansförbundet (The Citizens' Electoral League or, if you want a more direct translation, The Bourgeois Electoral League). The history book counts the Moderates and Liberals separately, so I've done the same here.
Suffice it to say that the BVF drew huge benefits from the electoral system. Although the Liberals won the popular vote by themselves, not even factoring in the Moderates, the BVF won nearly an absolute majority of the votes cast, and with 12 out of 23 seats, did win an absolute majority of seats on offer.
The inset makes this one a bit weird, but there was really no good way to place it. I'm not sure this is the best way to map it though - in particular, it does kind of need to be highlighted that the third ward had a Liberal majority of 5pp over the BVF on the main map, but a majority of the same size over the Labour list in the inset. Pie charts may be in order, if I could make them look decent. Does anyone know if there's a way to easily render vector pie charts?
Jönköping's first ward division was introduced in 1909, and simply followed the local bodies of water (Vättern, Munksjön and the Taberg River) to trace a north-south line across the city's then-territory. This would at one point have been an equitable split, but industrialisation had led to huge growth most of which was in the west, around the matchstick factory and the Munksjö paper mill. So by 1909, this split already resulted in a 25-17 split between the west and east wards, which was dangerously uneven - 25 being the legal maximum number of seats possible to elect in a single ward at the time. So when the parish of Ljungarum, south of the city, was annexed into it the following year, a new division into three wards was drawn up, with the first ward covering most of the old east ward, the second straddling the Munksjön-Vättern canal and taking in the growing villa suburbs along the western shore of Vättern, and the third covering the workers' quarters along Munksjön's western shore as well as several more middle-class villa suburbs. This created a nearly-equal three-way split, and the council was increased from 42 to 45 seats, in part to divide more neatly into three.
These wards were not further divided into polling districts, which was hardly necessary anyway - turnout was extremely low due to the unequal voting system (see the first page of this very thread for a closer explanation of that), which made voting feel pointless (somewhat justifiably) for a lot of the poorer citizens who might qualify to vote but only get one vote as opposed to dozens for someone wealthier.
As an example of this, in a local history book I found a summary of the 1914 election results. It's worth noting immediately that elections were by halves at this point, so only 23 of the 45 seats were up - I haven't been able to find the composition of the other 22. Also, Jönköping's conservatives were divided into two different local parties, one of which (the Moderates) was allied to the Liberals in the coalition dubbed "Nykterhetens och sparsamhetens vänner" (The Friends of Temperance and Frugality), while the other stood a list of its own under the name Borgerliga valmansförbundet (The Citizens' Electoral League or, if you want a more direct translation, The Bourgeois Electoral League). The history book counts the Moderates and Liberals separately, so I've done the same here.
Suffice it to say that the BVF drew huge benefits from the electoral system. Although the Liberals won the popular vote by themselves, not even factoring in the Moderates, the BVF won nearly an absolute majority of the votes cast, and with 12 out of 23 seats, did win an absolute majority of seats on offer.
The inset makes this one a bit weird, but there was really no good way to place it. I'm not sure this is the best way to map it though - in particular, it does kind of need to be highlighted that the third ward had a Liberal majority of 5pp over the BVF on the main map, but a majority of the same size over the Labour list in the inset. Pie charts may be in order, if I could make them look decent. Does anyone know if there's a way to easily render vector pie charts?
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Anyway, so in 1919 the graded suffrage system was abolished and women given the vote for the first time. Turnout rapidly began to pick up over the 1920s, going from 33% in 1920 to 61% in 1930 (these figures are specifically for Jönköping), driven largely by fervent Social Democratic GOTV efforts that paid very clear dividends for the party. In places like Malmö and Helsingborg, they were able to take over the council immediately in 1919, although the role of the magistrates in urban governance meant their majorities were less significant than you might expect. Stockholm and Gothenburg followed soon after, and by the end of the decade most major cities had red council majorities.
Jönköping, however, was cut from different cloth. True, it was a heavily industrialised city, but it also had a large administrative and military apparatus present, and significantly, a huge percentage of the population were some flavour of evangelical Christian, from the low-church Lutheran revivalists of the Evangelical Fatherland Foundation to the Methodists and Baptists to the fledgling Pentecostal movement, which came to Sweden in the 1910s and quickly began poaching members and even whole congregations from the existing Baptist community. This, coupled with the still fairly restrictive laws around free religious practice (it had been fully decriminalised in the 1880s, but there were still restrictions on the types of political office religious dissenters could hold in 1930), meant that a large chunk of the lower middle classes in Jönköping were fiercely loyal to the Liberal Party, which at the time was the leading voice of religious pluralism in Swedish politics. Some 88% of the city voted for prohibition in the August 1922 referendum, and the Moderate-Liberal coalition retained a fairly robust presence on the council even as the Liberals were taking a drubbing in most other places.
The result was that the 1930 election saw a relatively comfortable 25-20 majority for the combined right, dividing into 14 seats for the BVF (the conservative list) and 11 for the Moderate-Liberal coalition, whose evangelical orientation can be discerned from the label "Friends of Temperance and Frugality" (Nykterhetens och sparsamhetens vänner). However, the Social Democrats were in fact on the rise, most of the city's industrial workers evidently caring more about economic issues than religious ones. They won some 44% of the vote, making them the most-voted single list by more than a 10pp margin, and their voteshare would only increase as the 1930s dragged on.
Jönköping, however, was cut from different cloth. True, it was a heavily industrialised city, but it also had a large administrative and military apparatus present, and significantly, a huge percentage of the population were some flavour of evangelical Christian, from the low-church Lutheran revivalists of the Evangelical Fatherland Foundation to the Methodists and Baptists to the fledgling Pentecostal movement, which came to Sweden in the 1910s and quickly began poaching members and even whole congregations from the existing Baptist community. This, coupled with the still fairly restrictive laws around free religious practice (it had been fully decriminalised in the 1880s, but there were still restrictions on the types of political office religious dissenters could hold in 1930), meant that a large chunk of the lower middle classes in Jönköping were fiercely loyal to the Liberal Party, which at the time was the leading voice of religious pluralism in Swedish politics. Some 88% of the city voted for prohibition in the August 1922 referendum, and the Moderate-Liberal coalition retained a fairly robust presence on the council even as the Liberals were taking a drubbing in most other places.
The result was that the 1930 election saw a relatively comfortable 25-20 majority for the combined right, dividing into 14 seats for the BVF (the conservative list) and 11 for the Moderate-Liberal coalition, whose evangelical orientation can be discerned from the label "Friends of Temperance and Frugality" (Nykterhetens och sparsamhetens vänner). However, the Social Democrats were in fact on the rise, most of the city's industrial workers evidently caring more about economic issues than religious ones. They won some 44% of the vote, making them the most-voted single list by more than a 10pp margin, and their voteshare would only increase as the 1930s dragged on.
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I've been fucking around with the Swedish Finland TL again, mainly changing some dates around to make the time gap between the Great War and the present day smaller, so with that in mind, have a map.
The 1921 elections to the Lower House of the Riksdag would be the last before the Great War, and the last to take place using essentially the system of elections devised under Gustav III. The Lower House was formed out of the old Estates of Burghers and Peasants, and urban and rural areas remained strictly separate for electoral purposes. Two-thirds of the house was elected from single-member constituencies based on judicial districts, with all landowners eligible to vote, while the other third were elected from the cities with an electorate of property holders as well as those earning above a certain income bracket. This was a result of the freedom of enterprise reforms of the Ungern-Sternberg ministry in the 1880s, prior to which the urban members had been elected by the guilds and magistrates of each city. The only other significant change happened before the 1914 elections, at which point the three major cities switched from bloc voting to a majoritarian list system whereby the largest party would receive two thirds of the seats and the runner-up the remaining third. Although this looks like a benevolent reform, it was in fact done to exploit divisions in the urban Cap organisation, and it would serve this function admirably for the three elections the system was in use.
The preceding elections had been held in 1917, and saw an enormous landslide for the Hats (officially known as the National Party since the 1860s), which turfed out the previous Cap (Liberal) minority administration of Alexander von Friesen and won a number of constituencies formerly regarded as Cap strongholds. This was particularly true of the rural south, which was naturally inclined towards religious conservatism and protectionism, and grew more and more alienated by the Caps focusing on free trade and liberal reforms in government. The loss of their conservative wing would presage the second great split of the Liberal Party after the War.
The first great split had already occurred, creating the Radical Party, occasionally called the "Phrygians" as a nod to the type of cap worn by the French revolutionaries. The Radicals had formed as early as the 1870s, and indeed there had more or less always been an awkward squad of urban liberals positioning themselves to the left of the Caps. The New Liberal Party had formed in the 1830s to push for free trade and free enterprise against the conservative Cap leadership of the time, and folded into the Liberal Party alongside the "Peace Caps" after Gustav V's War in the 1860s - at the same time as the Hats and "War Caps" formed the National Party. The Liberals would soon turn out to be simply the Caps under a new name, leading disenchanted radicals to bolt out once again and form their own party. This carried on as a minor third party until the fall of the Friesen ministry in 1917, which left the Caps and the Phrygians nearly equal in seat share and raised the serious question of who would actually be the main opposition.
But these questions would be settled by the 1921 elections, which did see the Hats re-elected, but the Caps crawling back in the north and east to reclaim their status as the clear opposition. The Phrygians did keep their standing in the major cities, but in industrial districts they were coming under fire from an entirely new force. Although there had been various labour candidates elected in 1914 and 1917, some with Phrygian support and some not, 1921 saw the first foray of the Swedish Labour Party as an organised nationwide force. Although held back by the restrictive franchise, twenty-three Labour candidates were able to win seats, and the party would only keep growing in the years that followed.
Adolf Lagerheim, the "golden boy" of the Hats who had now led them to two election victories, looked set to spend five years implementing his party programme. However, his dreams would be cut short when the latest wave of unrest in Turkey led to Russian intervention, which activated the anti-Russian defensive alliance between Turkey, Britain, Prussia and Sweden and, in turn, the Franco-Russian defensive alliance against Prussia, sending Europe into cataclysmic war and effectively ensuring that the thing Lagerheim would be most remembered for would be neither his great election victories nor his benevolent social reforms. By the time the war was over, Sweden looked very different from before...
The 1921 elections to the Lower House of the Riksdag would be the last before the Great War, and the last to take place using essentially the system of elections devised under Gustav III. The Lower House was formed out of the old Estates of Burghers and Peasants, and urban and rural areas remained strictly separate for electoral purposes. Two-thirds of the house was elected from single-member constituencies based on judicial districts, with all landowners eligible to vote, while the other third were elected from the cities with an electorate of property holders as well as those earning above a certain income bracket. This was a result of the freedom of enterprise reforms of the Ungern-Sternberg ministry in the 1880s, prior to which the urban members had been elected by the guilds and magistrates of each city. The only other significant change happened before the 1914 elections, at which point the three major cities switched from bloc voting to a majoritarian list system whereby the largest party would receive two thirds of the seats and the runner-up the remaining third. Although this looks like a benevolent reform, it was in fact done to exploit divisions in the urban Cap organisation, and it would serve this function admirably for the three elections the system was in use.
The preceding elections had been held in 1917, and saw an enormous landslide for the Hats (officially known as the National Party since the 1860s), which turfed out the previous Cap (Liberal) minority administration of Alexander von Friesen and won a number of constituencies formerly regarded as Cap strongholds. This was particularly true of the rural south, which was naturally inclined towards religious conservatism and protectionism, and grew more and more alienated by the Caps focusing on free trade and liberal reforms in government. The loss of their conservative wing would presage the second great split of the Liberal Party after the War.
The first great split had already occurred, creating the Radical Party, occasionally called the "Phrygians" as a nod to the type of cap worn by the French revolutionaries. The Radicals had formed as early as the 1870s, and indeed there had more or less always been an awkward squad of urban liberals positioning themselves to the left of the Caps. The New Liberal Party had formed in the 1830s to push for free trade and free enterprise against the conservative Cap leadership of the time, and folded into the Liberal Party alongside the "Peace Caps" after Gustav V's War in the 1860s - at the same time as the Hats and "War Caps" formed the National Party. The Liberals would soon turn out to be simply the Caps under a new name, leading disenchanted radicals to bolt out once again and form their own party. This carried on as a minor third party until the fall of the Friesen ministry in 1917, which left the Caps and the Phrygians nearly equal in seat share and raised the serious question of who would actually be the main opposition.
But these questions would be settled by the 1921 elections, which did see the Hats re-elected, but the Caps crawling back in the north and east to reclaim their status as the clear opposition. The Phrygians did keep their standing in the major cities, but in industrial districts they were coming under fire from an entirely new force. Although there had been various labour candidates elected in 1914 and 1917, some with Phrygian support and some not, 1921 saw the first foray of the Swedish Labour Party as an organised nationwide force. Although held back by the restrictive franchise, twenty-three Labour candidates were able to win seats, and the party would only keep growing in the years that followed.
Adolf Lagerheim, the "golden boy" of the Hats who had now led them to two election victories, looked set to spend five years implementing his party programme. However, his dreams would be cut short when the latest wave of unrest in Turkey led to Russian intervention, which activated the anti-Russian defensive alliance between Turkey, Britain, Prussia and Sweden and, in turn, the Franco-Russian defensive alliance against Prussia, sending Europe into cataclysmic war and effectively ensuring that the thing Lagerheim would be most remembered for would be neither his great election victories nor his benevolent social reforms. By the time the war was over, Sweden looked very different from before...
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And something from OTL to go with that.
Back in June, Finland held municipal elections - I haven't been following Finnish politics quite as closely of late, I'm sorry to say, and so it kind of slipped me by. But now I've done the first local contest, and it's a place that's been sorely missing from my portfolio up until now: the capital itself, Helsinki.
Helsinki's location resembles Stockholm's, being coastal cities surrounded by islands and rocky peninsulas, but whereas Stockholm has been the capital of Sweden since the Middle Ages, Helsinki was a provincial backwater until Tsar Alexander I designated it as the capital of Finland in 1812, largely because he thought it would be shrewd to create a new capital rather than allow the Fenno-Swedish aristocracy to carry on as normal over in Åbo and potentially form pro-Swedish conspiracies. He ordered the German architect Carl Ludwig Engel, who happened to be stopping by at the time, to draw up a plan for a grand neoclassical city in the mould of Saint Petersburg, and even today much of central Helsinki is in a distinctly Russian neoclassical style. When Åbo burned down in 1827, the university and most of the remaining institutions (with the notable exception of the Lutheran archdiocese - Helsinki would not get a bishop until 1959) were moved over as well. Most of the Nyland coast, including Helsinki, was traditionally Swedish-speaking territory, and as most bureaucrats and educated people were Fenno-Swedes, it remained so until the 1880s, at which point industrialisation drove massive numbers of Finnish-speakers to move from the rural interior to the capital. This pattern of movement continues to this day, and today only about 6% of the population speaks Swedish natively.
Politically, the city is traditionally divided between the main Helsinki peninsula, which is wealthy, dominated by professionals and historically was largely Swedish-speaking, and as such leans conservative, and the suburbs in the northeast, around Hakaniemi and Kallio, which were entirely Finnish-speaking from the beginning, were heavily working-class and extremely dense, and voted strongly for the left. Again, comparisons to Stockholm are not unfair - the area south of the city centre is Östermalm, Kamppi and Töölö are Norrmalm, and Kallio is Södermalm. Like Södermalm, Kallio was targeted for slum clearance after the war, and in 1946 the city annexed a huge swath of rural land to build new housing estates on, partly to rehouse people from Kallio and partly to house the massive amount of internal migrants expected to arrive in the city during the following decades. That was an accurate prediction - Helsinki doubled in population between 1940 and 1970 - and while Finland never had anything like a Million Programme on the national level, Helsinki's municipal housing policy again strongly resembles that of Stockholm in the same period. Although some new estates were built in the northwest, the vast majority of them were in the east, across the bay from the city, which means that the east-west divide continues to show up on the map. Kallio itself and its surroundings have been heavily gentrified in the past few decades, which creates an interesting second divide between gentrified working-class areas, which tend to support the Greens and the Left Alliance, and non-gentrified ones, which have both a strong Social Democratic vote and a rising True Finn one.
This division on the left means that Helsinki ends up looking quite right-wing on the map, but this is only sort of true - in 2021, the red-green bloc (if we can call it that in Finland) won 42 seats to 43 for the combined right. As with most national capitals, localism is not big in Helsinki, and the nine parties represented on the city council are the same ones that sit in Parliament.
A note on administrative structures - traditionally, Helsinki had a Lord Mayor (ylipormestari) elected by the council who served as the chief executive of the municipal administration, theoretically as a non-political role, but in practice usually occupied by a politician agreed upon by the parties. This position has never been held by a member of the left, and the Coalition usually has it on lockdown. For the 2017 elections, Helsinki decided to join several other Finnish cities in adopting a position of Mayor (pormestari) who serves the same function but also chairs the municipal executive and is formally considered an elected official. Again, the Coalition has supplied both holders of this position, although it is worth noting that the current Mayor, Juhana Vartiainen, is a former Social Democrat who defected to the Coalition in 2015 because he thought Antti Rinne was too much of a radical. The Coalition, Social Democrats and Greens form a sort of informal grand coalition that controls the council, and in addition to Vartiainen as Mayor, the Greens' Fatim Diarra was elected to chair the council. Diarra is probably (I can't be entirely sure, but it feels like it stands to reason) the first black woman to hold such a high position in a major Finnish city, and had a long history as a feminist and anti-racist campaigner in addition to serving on the council since 2017.
Back in June, Finland held municipal elections - I haven't been following Finnish politics quite as closely of late, I'm sorry to say, and so it kind of slipped me by. But now I've done the first local contest, and it's a place that's been sorely missing from my portfolio up until now: the capital itself, Helsinki.
Helsinki's location resembles Stockholm's, being coastal cities surrounded by islands and rocky peninsulas, but whereas Stockholm has been the capital of Sweden since the Middle Ages, Helsinki was a provincial backwater until Tsar Alexander I designated it as the capital of Finland in 1812, largely because he thought it would be shrewd to create a new capital rather than allow the Fenno-Swedish aristocracy to carry on as normal over in Åbo and potentially form pro-Swedish conspiracies. He ordered the German architect Carl Ludwig Engel, who happened to be stopping by at the time, to draw up a plan for a grand neoclassical city in the mould of Saint Petersburg, and even today much of central Helsinki is in a distinctly Russian neoclassical style. When Åbo burned down in 1827, the university and most of the remaining institutions (with the notable exception of the Lutheran archdiocese - Helsinki would not get a bishop until 1959) were moved over as well. Most of the Nyland coast, including Helsinki, was traditionally Swedish-speaking territory, and as most bureaucrats and educated people were Fenno-Swedes, it remained so until the 1880s, at which point industrialisation drove massive numbers of Finnish-speakers to move from the rural interior to the capital. This pattern of movement continues to this day, and today only about 6% of the population speaks Swedish natively.
Politically, the city is traditionally divided between the main Helsinki peninsula, which is wealthy, dominated by professionals and historically was largely Swedish-speaking, and as such leans conservative, and the suburbs in the northeast, around Hakaniemi and Kallio, which were entirely Finnish-speaking from the beginning, were heavily working-class and extremely dense, and voted strongly for the left. Again, comparisons to Stockholm are not unfair - the area south of the city centre is Östermalm, Kamppi and Töölö are Norrmalm, and Kallio is Södermalm. Like Södermalm, Kallio was targeted for slum clearance after the war, and in 1946 the city annexed a huge swath of rural land to build new housing estates on, partly to rehouse people from Kallio and partly to house the massive amount of internal migrants expected to arrive in the city during the following decades. That was an accurate prediction - Helsinki doubled in population between 1940 and 1970 - and while Finland never had anything like a Million Programme on the national level, Helsinki's municipal housing policy again strongly resembles that of Stockholm in the same period. Although some new estates were built in the northwest, the vast majority of them were in the east, across the bay from the city, which means that the east-west divide continues to show up on the map. Kallio itself and its surroundings have been heavily gentrified in the past few decades, which creates an interesting second divide between gentrified working-class areas, which tend to support the Greens and the Left Alliance, and non-gentrified ones, which have both a strong Social Democratic vote and a rising True Finn one.
This division on the left means that Helsinki ends up looking quite right-wing on the map, but this is only sort of true - in 2021, the red-green bloc (if we can call it that in Finland) won 42 seats to 43 for the combined right. As with most national capitals, localism is not big in Helsinki, and the nine parties represented on the city council are the same ones that sit in Parliament.
A note on administrative structures - traditionally, Helsinki had a Lord Mayor (ylipormestari) elected by the council who served as the chief executive of the municipal administration, theoretically as a non-political role, but in practice usually occupied by a politician agreed upon by the parties. This position has never been held by a member of the left, and the Coalition usually has it on lockdown. For the 2017 elections, Helsinki decided to join several other Finnish cities in adopting a position of Mayor (pormestari) who serves the same function but also chairs the municipal executive and is formally considered an elected official. Again, the Coalition has supplied both holders of this position, although it is worth noting that the current Mayor, Juhana Vartiainen, is a former Social Democrat who defected to the Coalition in 2015 because he thought Antti Rinne was too much of a radical. The Coalition, Social Democrats and Greens form a sort of informal grand coalition that controls the council, and in addition to Vartiainen as Mayor, the Greens' Fatim Diarra was elected to chair the council. Diarra is probably (I can't be entirely sure, but it feels like it stands to reason) the first black woman to hold such a high position in a major Finnish city, and had a long history as a feminist and anti-racist campaigner in addition to serving on the council since 2017.
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In 1916, Finland held its last elections under the rule of Grand Prince Nicholas II (better known outside of Finland as Nikolai II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias). It was also the only election held under universal suffrage in Finland that returned a one-party majority, in this case for the Social Democrats. Although Finland didn't fully participate in the Russian war effort, being exempt from conscription and protected from its local defence forces being sent outside Finland without the Senate's consent, the privations of life during a world war nonetheless made themselves felt, and by 1916 the Finns were just as sick of it as their Russian neighbours. The SDP's big victory came after several years of growth, aided by the short and unpredictable election cycles that were the result of the Diet constantly getting into conflict with the administrators appointed from Saint Petersburg who had the power to dissolve it.
The politics of 19th century Finland had been divided into two broad factions within the ruling class: the Svecomans, who wanted to maintain the traditional ruling elite and the Swedish language as a way to tie Finland more closely to the Germanic world, and the Fennomans, who sought to make Finnish the official language of the state and promoted the universal teaching of Finnish culture. The Russians gave tacit support to the Fennomans early on, seeing in them a way to break Finland off from Sweden culturally and thus reduce the risk of Sweden trying to reclaim its former province, and along with the robust Finnish-speaking majority everywhere but the coastal regions and the cities, this gave them the clear upper hand from about the 1860s onwards. The Svecomans switched tactics as a result, moving from defending the dominance of the Swedish language and culture to protecting the Swedish-speaking minority. Among other things, this meant giving the rural Swedish-speaking populations in Nyland and Ostrobothnia a look-in for the first time in decades, and promoting their traditional culture as a counterpoint to the Finnish national romanticism of the Fennomans. When universal suffrage was granted in 1906, the remaining Svecomans formed the Swedish People's Party (Svenska folkpartiet, SFP) as a way to advance the interests of all Swedish-speakers, and this essentially remains their function to this day.
By this point, the Fennoman movement was itself falling into discord. The loosely organised Finnish Party (Suomalainen puolue, SP) lost the support of Saint Petersburg as soon as it became clear that it was in a dominant position, and under Alexander III, the policy of the Russian government switched from supporting Finnish culture to Russification. In 1894, the Finnish Party split in half, with a younger generation of politicians demanding a harder line against Russia and support for immediate moves toward independence. This group formed the Young Finnish Party (Nuorsuomalainen puolue, NSP), taking its name by analogy to groups like Young Italy and Young Ireland, and quite soon a regional dichotomy emerged with the more socially stratified west supporting the "Old" Finnish Party and the more egalitarian east supporting the Young Finns.
The truly intense period of Russification started in 1899, after Nicholas II appointed Nikolai Bobrikov to the position of Governor-General of Finland. Bobrikov's instructions included reforming the Senate (the combined supreme court and main governing body) to bring it under tighter Russian control, introducing Russian as an official language and curtailing Finland's military autonomy, which brought such intense resistance that the period between 1899 and 1905 is known in Finnish history as the "Years of Oppression" (sortovuodet/ofärdsåren). Bobrikov's rule only ended in June 1904, when a young nationalist named Eugen Schauman assassinated him. Schauman killed himself immediately after killing Bobrikov, which made him an instant national hero - in 2004, he was voted the 34th greatest Finn in history in a nationwide poll conducted by Yle. Russification further cemented the divide in the Fennoman movement, as the Old Finns supported appeasement, arguing that to resist openly would invite the Russians to dismiss all remaining Finnish officials and replace them with Russians, while the Young Finns continued to favour resistance.
After the 1905 revolution in Russia, however, the authorities eased off the Russification programme and allowed direct elections to a unicameral Finnish parliament, which would continue to share power with the Senate. These elections were open to all adult Finns regardless of sex, which made it one of the first countries in the world to give women the vote (depending on your definition of "country"). This meant that the Finnish parties would have to stake out economic policies as well as cultural ones, which proved somewhat awkward for the Young Finns in particular. The Old Finns were largely paternalist conservatives, who were sceptical towards a complete free market as well as expanding workers' rights, but the Young Finns found themselves split between a conservative and a liberal faction. The "swallows" (pääskyt), led by the high court judge Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, supported a traditional social order as well as strict constitutionalism and resistance to Russian commands, while the "sparrows" (varpuset), led by civil servant and law professor Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, supported liberal reforms. This division would become completely untenable once Finland won its independence, which is why you don't see the Young Finns around today, but in 1916 the threat of Russification was still present enough that the party kept itself together.
The SDP emerged onto the scene around the same time, closely tied to the trade unions and associations of smallholders in the countryside - Finland was still overwhelmingly rural and agrarian at this time, but because it was also extremely poor, socialism held appeal for a lot of Finnish peasants. Like most social democratic parties of its day, it was modelled on the SPD in Germany, and like the SPD, it included elements ranging from moderate social reformers to outright revolutionaries. But like its bourgeois counterparts, the SDP was held together by its struggle against an outside enemy - though whether that enemy was the Russian autocrats or the Finnish bourgeoisie was very much in the eye of the beholder.
They weren't the only social movement to take root in rural Finland at this time, though, and really we'd be remiss not to talk about the Agrarian League (Maalaisliitto, ML). The Finnish Agrarians differ from their Swedish and Norwegian counterparts in that they had one clear early leader and ideologue: Santeri Alkio, a writer and former Young Finn from Ostrobothnia who left the party after concluding its ideology was too far out of step with the needs and interests of rural people. Alkio took a great interest in the education and self-improvement of the peasant class, while also opposing and fearing the growth of socialism in rural Finland - this led him to formulate an ideology that very closely resembles political Catholicism, only without the clericalist aspects (although Alkio was a devout evangelical Christian, he opposed the established church). The Agrarian ideology was focused around decentralisation, community self-improvement and self-organisation, and social and economic reforms to improve the lives of the peasants. Alkio also supported independence and democracy, generally following the Young Finn line on those issues while continuing to stress the importance of rural people organising themselves rather than following the dictates of Helsinki intellectuals. In time, the Agrarians would become one of Finland's natural governing parties, being in power from independence until 1987 with only a few interruptions, none longer than two years. It took them a while to gain traction though, and in 1916 they were the second-smallest party in the Diet, beating only the incoherent and faction-ridden remnant of the Christian Workers' League (Kristilinnen työväen liitto, KTL), which had once had ambitions of rivalling the SDP but now held only a single seat in Finland Proper.
The Diet elected in 1916 would serve for about a year and a half, sitting through the fall of Nicholas II in the February Revolution and the collapse of the Russian war effort under the Provisional Government, but met its end when it passed a law transferring all political power except foreign affairs and defence to its own jurisdiction, which caused the Provisional Government to order its dissolution. Although not all Finns agreed that they were still able to do so, early elections nevertheless went ahead in October. By then, events were coming to a head in Russia once again...
The politics of 19th century Finland had been divided into two broad factions within the ruling class: the Svecomans, who wanted to maintain the traditional ruling elite and the Swedish language as a way to tie Finland more closely to the Germanic world, and the Fennomans, who sought to make Finnish the official language of the state and promoted the universal teaching of Finnish culture. The Russians gave tacit support to the Fennomans early on, seeing in them a way to break Finland off from Sweden culturally and thus reduce the risk of Sweden trying to reclaim its former province, and along with the robust Finnish-speaking majority everywhere but the coastal regions and the cities, this gave them the clear upper hand from about the 1860s onwards. The Svecomans switched tactics as a result, moving from defending the dominance of the Swedish language and culture to protecting the Swedish-speaking minority. Among other things, this meant giving the rural Swedish-speaking populations in Nyland and Ostrobothnia a look-in for the first time in decades, and promoting their traditional culture as a counterpoint to the Finnish national romanticism of the Fennomans. When universal suffrage was granted in 1906, the remaining Svecomans formed the Swedish People's Party (Svenska folkpartiet, SFP) as a way to advance the interests of all Swedish-speakers, and this essentially remains their function to this day.
By this point, the Fennoman movement was itself falling into discord. The loosely organised Finnish Party (Suomalainen puolue, SP) lost the support of Saint Petersburg as soon as it became clear that it was in a dominant position, and under Alexander III, the policy of the Russian government switched from supporting Finnish culture to Russification. In 1894, the Finnish Party split in half, with a younger generation of politicians demanding a harder line against Russia and support for immediate moves toward independence. This group formed the Young Finnish Party (Nuorsuomalainen puolue, NSP), taking its name by analogy to groups like Young Italy and Young Ireland, and quite soon a regional dichotomy emerged with the more socially stratified west supporting the "Old" Finnish Party and the more egalitarian east supporting the Young Finns.
The truly intense period of Russification started in 1899, after Nicholas II appointed Nikolai Bobrikov to the position of Governor-General of Finland. Bobrikov's instructions included reforming the Senate (the combined supreme court and main governing body) to bring it under tighter Russian control, introducing Russian as an official language and curtailing Finland's military autonomy, which brought such intense resistance that the period between 1899 and 1905 is known in Finnish history as the "Years of Oppression" (sortovuodet/ofärdsåren). Bobrikov's rule only ended in June 1904, when a young nationalist named Eugen Schauman assassinated him. Schauman killed himself immediately after killing Bobrikov, which made him an instant national hero - in 2004, he was voted the 34th greatest Finn in history in a nationwide poll conducted by Yle. Russification further cemented the divide in the Fennoman movement, as the Old Finns supported appeasement, arguing that to resist openly would invite the Russians to dismiss all remaining Finnish officials and replace them with Russians, while the Young Finns continued to favour resistance.
After the 1905 revolution in Russia, however, the authorities eased off the Russification programme and allowed direct elections to a unicameral Finnish parliament, which would continue to share power with the Senate. These elections were open to all adult Finns regardless of sex, which made it one of the first countries in the world to give women the vote (depending on your definition of "country"). This meant that the Finnish parties would have to stake out economic policies as well as cultural ones, which proved somewhat awkward for the Young Finns in particular. The Old Finns were largely paternalist conservatives, who were sceptical towards a complete free market as well as expanding workers' rights, but the Young Finns found themselves split between a conservative and a liberal faction. The "swallows" (pääskyt), led by the high court judge Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, supported a traditional social order as well as strict constitutionalism and resistance to Russian commands, while the "sparrows" (varpuset), led by civil servant and law professor Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, supported liberal reforms. This division would become completely untenable once Finland won its independence, which is why you don't see the Young Finns around today, but in 1916 the threat of Russification was still present enough that the party kept itself together.
The SDP emerged onto the scene around the same time, closely tied to the trade unions and associations of smallholders in the countryside - Finland was still overwhelmingly rural and agrarian at this time, but because it was also extremely poor, socialism held appeal for a lot of Finnish peasants. Like most social democratic parties of its day, it was modelled on the SPD in Germany, and like the SPD, it included elements ranging from moderate social reformers to outright revolutionaries. But like its bourgeois counterparts, the SDP was held together by its struggle against an outside enemy - though whether that enemy was the Russian autocrats or the Finnish bourgeoisie was very much in the eye of the beholder.
They weren't the only social movement to take root in rural Finland at this time, though, and really we'd be remiss not to talk about the Agrarian League (Maalaisliitto, ML). The Finnish Agrarians differ from their Swedish and Norwegian counterparts in that they had one clear early leader and ideologue: Santeri Alkio, a writer and former Young Finn from Ostrobothnia who left the party after concluding its ideology was too far out of step with the needs and interests of rural people. Alkio took a great interest in the education and self-improvement of the peasant class, while also opposing and fearing the growth of socialism in rural Finland - this led him to formulate an ideology that very closely resembles political Catholicism, only without the clericalist aspects (although Alkio was a devout evangelical Christian, he opposed the established church). The Agrarian ideology was focused around decentralisation, community self-improvement and self-organisation, and social and economic reforms to improve the lives of the peasants. Alkio also supported independence and democracy, generally following the Young Finn line on those issues while continuing to stress the importance of rural people organising themselves rather than following the dictates of Helsinki intellectuals. In time, the Agrarians would become one of Finland's natural governing parties, being in power from independence until 1987 with only a few interruptions, none longer than two years. It took them a while to gain traction though, and in 1916 they were the second-smallest party in the Diet, beating only the incoherent and faction-ridden remnant of the Christian Workers' League (Kristilinnen työväen liitto, KTL), which had once had ambitions of rivalling the SDP but now held only a single seat in Finland Proper.
The Diet elected in 1916 would serve for about a year and a half, sitting through the fall of Nicholas II in the February Revolution and the collapse of the Russian war effort under the Provisional Government, but met its end when it passed a law transferring all political power except foreign affairs and defence to its own jurisdiction, which caused the Provisional Government to order its dissolution. Although not all Finns agreed that they were still able to do so, early elections nevertheless went ahead in October. By then, events were coming to a head in Russia once again...
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Well, I'm at my shit again.
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Some more Swedish Finland stuff. Again, descriptions possibly to come.
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It's starting
Worth noting that this coastline is anachronistic - there are several harbour extensions on this that hadn't yet been built in 1970. I may go back and change that in time.
Worth noting that this coastline is anachronistic - there are several harbour extensions on this that hadn't yet been built in 1970. I may go back and change that in time.
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So here's the division into wards. I did also try to trace the coastline off the 1970 ward map, and adjusted the Petri-Kirseberg parish boundary (which isn't actually defined all the way out on the maps) to go around the end of the oil pier.
We can quite clearly see which parts of the city were densely populated on this - there's a cluster in Slottsstaden west of the city centre (whose population was rapidly ageing at this point and would consist largely of pensioners in the 80s and 90s, leading to the nickname "Käppastan"), but other than that the big concentration is around Möllevången and Sofielund, which had been some of the densest areas in Sweden in the 50s and earlier, but would be relieved by huge amounts of social and co-op housing being built around the eastern and southern edges of the city, some of which we can see on this map (in Fosie and Västra Skrävlinge parishes, the latter being Rosengård).
In 1973, this shift has continued, with Lindängen appearing on the map (in the southwest corner of Fosie) for the first time and Rosengård continuing to be built up. There was also a decrease in the number of wards in central Malmö, mostly to get rid of the weird situation present in several parishes where two wards would be coterminous with one another while still existing separately - or at least that's the only way I can interpret the maps. Kirseberg also saw the elimination of a couple of wards, and the separate one for Kronprinsen (Petri 8) disappeared as well. Which is sad considering it went against the founding philosophy of the estate - the idea that residents should have all they needed to lead a full life without ever leaving the premises - but on balance I'm not sure having to leave once every three years would've done them much harm.
We can quite clearly see which parts of the city were densely populated on this - there's a cluster in Slottsstaden west of the city centre (whose population was rapidly ageing at this point and would consist largely of pensioners in the 80s and 90s, leading to the nickname "Käppastan"), but other than that the big concentration is around Möllevången and Sofielund, which had been some of the densest areas in Sweden in the 50s and earlier, but would be relieved by huge amounts of social and co-op housing being built around the eastern and southern edges of the city, some of which we can see on this map (in Fosie and Västra Skrävlinge parishes, the latter being Rosengård).
In 1973, this shift has continued, with Lindängen appearing on the map (in the southwest corner of Fosie) for the first time and Rosengård continuing to be built up. There was also a decrease in the number of wards in central Malmö, mostly to get rid of the weird situation present in several parishes where two wards would be coterminous with one another while still existing separately - or at least that's the only way I can interpret the maps. Kirseberg also saw the elimination of a couple of wards, and the separate one for Kronprinsen (Petri 8) disappeared as well. Which is sad considering it went against the founding philosophy of the estate - the idea that residents should have all they needed to lead a full life without ever leaving the premises - but on balance I'm not sure having to leave once every three years would've done them much harm.
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And here's that on an actual election map - the figures for 1970 aren't available online, so that one's going to have to come in later.
As you can tell, the constituencies don't come through very clearly, so I've added text clarifying which parishes were in which ones.
Not a ton has actually changed politically - the city remains split between east and west, with the exception of Husie which is more suburban and more middle-class than the rest of eastern Malmö, and as such is relatively marginal politically. One thing that is different from a modern map is that Limhamn still had its industries in the 70s, and still voted Social Democratic as a result of this. After the closure of the cement factory in 1978 and the limestone quarry in 1994, the area began to gentrify and reinvent itself as a seaside commuter suburb (only closer to the city than usual for those), and today it's both solidly blue and one of the most expensive parts of the city to buy a home in.
The other notable difference is the relatively strong position of the Centre, which almost outpolled the Moderates across the city. This was almost entirely due to a) the council elections having been synched to the parliamentary elections from 1970, which meant right-wing voters were less inclined to split their ballots, and b) the personal popularity of Thorbjörn Fälldin, who led the party to its all-time peak in 1973 even as the blue bloc as a whole narrowly missed a majority. Once Fälldin was gone, the Centre all but disappeared in Malmö - they left the council in 1988, and with the exception of one seat in the right-wing landslide of 1991, they didn't actually come back until 2018.
As you can tell, the constituencies don't come through very clearly, so I've added text clarifying which parishes were in which ones.
Not a ton has actually changed politically - the city remains split between east and west, with the exception of Husie which is more suburban and more middle-class than the rest of eastern Malmö, and as such is relatively marginal politically. One thing that is different from a modern map is that Limhamn still had its industries in the 70s, and still voted Social Democratic as a result of this. After the closure of the cement factory in 1978 and the limestone quarry in 1994, the area began to gentrify and reinvent itself as a seaside commuter suburb (only closer to the city than usual for those), and today it's both solidly blue and one of the most expensive parts of the city to buy a home in.
The other notable difference is the relatively strong position of the Centre, which almost outpolled the Moderates across the city. This was almost entirely due to a) the council elections having been synched to the parliamentary elections from 1970, which meant right-wing voters were less inclined to split their ballots, and b) the personal popularity of Thorbjörn Fälldin, who led the party to its all-time peak in 1973 even as the blue bloc as a whole narrowly missed a majority. Once Fälldin was gone, the Centre all but disappeared in Malmö - they left the council in 1988, and with the exception of one seat in the right-wing landslide of 1991, they didn't actually come back until 2018.
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Since we don't have any real results yet, I thought I'd go back in time a bit and also try out the new municipal election format somewhere outside Sweden for a change.
In 1919, Berlin held its first-ever municipal elections under universal suffrage. For all its history up until that point, the City Council (known in German by the very handy term Stadtverordnetenversammlung) had been elected by the usual Prussian three-class electoral system, which gave a few hundred very rich voters equal weight to the poorest 80% or so of the city. Although turnout was always low, the SPD had a near-monopoly on the votes in the third class, so everyone assumed the city would go very deep red once the class distinction was abolished. But of course, by this point the SPD was splitting wide open, and both factions had some sway in different parts of Berlin - the majority SPD was strong in the city centre and the southern suburbs, while the USPD got the loyalty of the Wedding party organisation and quite a few of the north and east suburbs.
The election saw quite a low turnout once again, only 57,6%, likely because the National Assembly and Prussian Landtag elections had both been held quite recently and people were fed up with voting. The result saw the SPD and USPD on almost exactly equal voteshares, the latter edging out the former by a single seat. Put together, the two parties reached nearly two-thirds of the vote, with the remainder split between the four bourgeois parties now emerging - the DDP, the successor of the old left-liberals who had always dominated the higher classes in Berlin, only achieved a narrow third place ahead of the conservative DNVP, and over the next decade they'd only continue to shrink.
In 1919, Berlin held its first-ever municipal elections under universal suffrage. For all its history up until that point, the City Council (known in German by the very handy term Stadtverordnetenversammlung) had been elected by the usual Prussian three-class electoral system, which gave a few hundred very rich voters equal weight to the poorest 80% or so of the city. Although turnout was always low, the SPD had a near-monopoly on the votes in the third class, so everyone assumed the city would go very deep red once the class distinction was abolished. But of course, by this point the SPD was splitting wide open, and both factions had some sway in different parts of Berlin - the majority SPD was strong in the city centre and the southern suburbs, while the USPD got the loyalty of the Wedding party organisation and quite a few of the north and east suburbs.
The election saw quite a low turnout once again, only 57,6%, likely because the National Assembly and Prussian Landtag elections had both been held quite recently and people were fed up with voting. The result saw the SPD and USPD on almost exactly equal voteshares, the latter edging out the former by a single seat. Put together, the two parties reached nearly two-thirds of the vote, with the remainder split between the four bourgeois parties now emerging - the DDP, the successor of the old left-liberals who had always dominated the higher classes in Berlin, only achieved a narrow third place ahead of the conservative DNVP, and over the next decade they'd only continue to shrink.
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The council elected in 1919 was dissolved after just over a year. Some of my sources say this is because the new elections held were the inaugural elections for the new Greater Berlin council, but the problem with that is I can't find any data suggesting councillors were elected anywhere outside the old boundaries of the city. It's quite possible the outer districts did hold elections, but those don't seem to have been recorded anywhere, and this is arguably sort of good as it lets us gawk at the sheer insanity of some of the initial district boundaries. I'm not saying Hitler was good, per se, but finally straightening them out in 1938 is a definite point in his favour.
In any case, the 1920 election was itself thrown out and redone in October 1921. Unfortunately I don't have any local data for those (except for the district assemblies), so the next election I've mapped is 1925. This, then, is the first election for which I can find data covering all of Greater Berlin, and by sheer coincidence, also the SPD's best election result in the city under the Weimar Republic. With 32% of the vote, they won a clear plurality over the DNVP on 20%, and the KPD on 18% was prevented from winning any districts including their bastions in Wedding and Friedrichshain. In fact, the only districts not to vote SPD were the four southwestern ones, then as now home to some of the richest bastards in Berlin.
In any case, the 1920 election was itself thrown out and redone in October 1921. Unfortunately I don't have any local data for those (except for the district assemblies), so the next election I've mapped is 1925. This, then, is the first election for which I can find data covering all of Greater Berlin, and by sheer coincidence, also the SPD's best election result in the city under the Weimar Republic. With 32% of the vote, they won a clear plurality over the DNVP on 20%, and the KPD on 18% was prevented from winning any districts including their bastions in Wedding and Friedrichshain. In fact, the only districts not to vote SPD were the four southwestern ones, then as now home to some of the richest bastards in Berlin.
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German reunification was a hell of a drug
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In 1983, after twelve years of single-party government, the SPÖ lost their majority. It had been quite an achievement to win an overall majority in the first place, and in every election since 1971 they'd gone in with plans for what to do if they lost it - the plan being to form a coalition with the FPÖ. This might seem odd to us today, but at the time the FPÖ was mostly a liberal party along the lines of the FDP in Germany, although they still had a large ex-Nazi element (as did the FDP in its early days, for that matter). This had brought controversy in 1975, when the FPÖ was still led by former SS officer Friedrich Peter, but by 1983 he'd retired and been replaced with Norbert Steger, a young liberal-minded lawyer who seemed to genuinely want to clean up his party. The SPÖ-FPÖ coalition became a reality, just a year after its German counterpart had been toppled in a confidence vote. But Bruno Kreisky, who was now 72 years old and rapidly losing kidney function, would not be leading this new government. Instead the task fell to Fred Sinowatz, a Burgenland Croat who'd served as Kreisky's education minister. Kreisky would spend his retirement sniping at his party colleagues and suing Simon Wiesenthal for defamation, and finally died in 1990.
Sinowatz would not be long-lived as Chancellor. In 1986, two major events happened that shattered the governing coalition. In June, the presidential election saw Kurt Waldheim, former Wehrmacht intelligence officer and Secretary General of the UN, win office in spite of revelations that he'd been extensively involved in Nazi war crimes (which somehow didn't surface over the ten years he spent at the UN). Although Kreisky, ever the weird unit when it came to the Nazi legacy, supported Waldheim against his accusers, Sinowatz and several of his ministers decided their conscience wouldn't let them serve under Waldheim, and so they resigned as soon as he was elected. Sinowatz would be succeeded as Chancellor by Franz Vranitzky, who would in time become the first Austrian head of government to seriously reckon with the country's role in World War II and the Holocaust. That was still some years away, however, and the immediate crisis was still not over. In September 1986, at the FPÖ conference, Norbert Steger was overthrown by the "German-national" wing of the party. In his place, the party was taken over by Jörg Haider, the son of two actual pre-Anschluss Austrian Nazis (we hate Austrian Nazis), who advocated a hard line against immigrants, Islam, welfare fraud and big finance - a blueprint that would be followed by a generation of right-wing populists across Europe. Even though Kreisky (again) had praised Haider's political acumen, his ideological position meant that the SPÖ couldn't possibly govern with him, and Vranitzky chose to dissolve the National Council rather than try to work with the FPÖ any longer. The result was mixed - the SPÖ made no gains, but neither did the opposition ÖVP. Indeed, the two-party system began to buckle for the first time since the war, with the FPÖ nearly reaching ten percent of the vote and the Greens (newly united after contesting the 1983 election as two separate parties) entering the Council for the first time with around five percent and eight seats.
The 1986 election saw a return to the grand coalition, as neither the SPÖ nor the ÖVP wanted to work with Haider and there was no other path to a majority without him. This time, it would last fourteen years, seeing Austria through to the end of the millennium.
Sinowatz would not be long-lived as Chancellor. In 1986, two major events happened that shattered the governing coalition. In June, the presidential election saw Kurt Waldheim, former Wehrmacht intelligence officer and Secretary General of the UN, win office in spite of revelations that he'd been extensively involved in Nazi war crimes (which somehow didn't surface over the ten years he spent at the UN). Although Kreisky, ever the weird unit when it came to the Nazi legacy, supported Waldheim against his accusers, Sinowatz and several of his ministers decided their conscience wouldn't let them serve under Waldheim, and so they resigned as soon as he was elected. Sinowatz would be succeeded as Chancellor by Franz Vranitzky, who would in time become the first Austrian head of government to seriously reckon with the country's role in World War II and the Holocaust. That was still some years away, however, and the immediate crisis was still not over. In September 1986, at the FPÖ conference, Norbert Steger was overthrown by the "German-national" wing of the party. In his place, the party was taken over by Jörg Haider, the son of two actual pre-Anschluss Austrian Nazis (we hate Austrian Nazis), who advocated a hard line against immigrants, Islam, welfare fraud and big finance - a blueprint that would be followed by a generation of right-wing populists across Europe. Even though Kreisky (again) had praised Haider's political acumen, his ideological position meant that the SPÖ couldn't possibly govern with him, and Vranitzky chose to dissolve the National Council rather than try to work with the FPÖ any longer. The result was mixed - the SPÖ made no gains, but neither did the opposition ÖVP. Indeed, the two-party system began to buckle for the first time since the war, with the FPÖ nearly reaching ten percent of the vote and the Greens (newly united after contesting the 1983 election as two separate parties) entering the Council for the first time with around five percent and eight seats.
The 1986 election saw a return to the grand coalition, as neither the SPÖ nor the ÖVP wanted to work with Haider and there was no other path to a majority without him. This time, it would last fourteen years, seeing Austria through to the end of the millennium.
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And now for something completely different.
The 1924 Bavarian Landtag election was a big sign of things to come for Germany, held as it was just days after the verdict in the "Hitler Trial" was announced. The previous year, as most of you are likely aware, a clique of right-wing nationalists led by Adolf Hitler and Erich von Ludendorff had attempted to stage a putsch in Munich with the goal of overthrowing the state government and marching on Berlin - they got as far as occupying a beer hall and marching most of the way to the Ministry of Defence (which Bayern obviously had - German federalism is weird) before the police stopped them, killing 16 putschists and sending Hitler and Ludendorff to jail. The resulting treason trial went from late February until the 1st of April, famously giving Hitler the best platform he could ever hope for to get his message out into the press and the public record. Ludendorff ended up acquitted, but Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he only ended up serving nine months. Once again, he used his time shrewdly, and when he was released in December, he had a finished manuscript for Mein Kampf, his political memoir, ready to be published.
By the time Hitler's verdict was announced, however, the campaign for the state elections was in full swing. After their putsch failed, Hitler and Ludendorff's supporters went to work organising a political movement that could carry on their ambitions and prove that their views held sway with the German people. Although the "Völkischer Block" ("völkisch" is very hard to translate, but "nationalist" is close enough for government work) only received moderate success nationally, winning around seven percent of the vote in the May 1924 Reichstag election, their results in Bayern were far more encouraging. The state campaign had benefited hugely from the publicity surrounding the trial, and as polling day was less than a week after the verdict came out, momentum was still on the VB's side. They reached a staggering 17%, nearly wresting second place from the SPD and inflicting serious blows against nearly all parties of the centre-right. In particular, supporters of the liberal parties abandoned ship en masse to vote tactically against the VB, presaging the similar developments on the federal level after the 1929 financial crash.
The emergency government installed following the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch resigned after the elections, giving way to a BVP-BB coalition under BVP leader Heinrich Held. Although not having a majority, the coalition was tolerated by the Landtag, and indeed Bayern became one of the most politically stable states in Germany during the late 20s and early 30s - a powerful contrast to its status in the early 20s.
1920 here
The 1924 Bavarian Landtag election was a big sign of things to come for Germany, held as it was just days after the verdict in the "Hitler Trial" was announced. The previous year, as most of you are likely aware, a clique of right-wing nationalists led by Adolf Hitler and Erich von Ludendorff had attempted to stage a putsch in Munich with the goal of overthrowing the state government and marching on Berlin - they got as far as occupying a beer hall and marching most of the way to the Ministry of Defence (which Bayern obviously had - German federalism is weird) before the police stopped them, killing 16 putschists and sending Hitler and Ludendorff to jail. The resulting treason trial went from late February until the 1st of April, famously giving Hitler the best platform he could ever hope for to get his message out into the press and the public record. Ludendorff ended up acquitted, but Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he only ended up serving nine months. Once again, he used his time shrewdly, and when he was released in December, he had a finished manuscript for Mein Kampf, his political memoir, ready to be published.
By the time Hitler's verdict was announced, however, the campaign for the state elections was in full swing. After their putsch failed, Hitler and Ludendorff's supporters went to work organising a political movement that could carry on their ambitions and prove that their views held sway with the German people. Although the "Völkischer Block" ("völkisch" is very hard to translate, but "nationalist" is close enough for government work) only received moderate success nationally, winning around seven percent of the vote in the May 1924 Reichstag election, their results in Bayern were far more encouraging. The state campaign had benefited hugely from the publicity surrounding the trial, and as polling day was less than a week after the verdict came out, momentum was still on the VB's side. They reached a staggering 17%, nearly wresting second place from the SPD and inflicting serious blows against nearly all parties of the centre-right. In particular, supporters of the liberal parties abandoned ship en masse to vote tactically against the VB, presaging the similar developments on the federal level after the 1929 financial crash.
The emergency government installed following the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch resigned after the elections, giving way to a BVP-BB coalition under BVP leader Heinrich Held. Although not having a majority, the coalition was tolerated by the Landtag, and indeed Bayern became one of the most politically stable states in Germany during the late 20s and early 30s - a powerful contrast to its status in the early 20s.
1920 here
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- he/him
I found out that Nürnberg maintains a statistics website that includes election reports going back to 1928. Among them - a breakdown of the July 1932 election results in Franken.
This is, of course, the most depressing free election held in the Weimar Republic, with the Nazis getting 37 percent of the vote and becoming the strongest party by far in Germany. We can see this very clearly in Franken, which as the home of the NSDAP congress grounds in Nürnberg-Dutzendteich and the offices of Der Stürmer, the Nazi tabloid (whose editor Julius Streicher was also the head of the local party organisation), was a key region for the Nazis. Coburg was the first city to fly the swastika flag from its town hall, the party having won an overall majority in the 1929 local elections, and in January 1932 gave Hitler honorary citizenship. In April, Hitler failed to be elected President, losing by a 15-point margin to Paul von Hindenburg, the incumbent, who had the backing of every party but the Nazis and the KPD. Even so, the Nazis looked with confidence to the next Reichstag elections, which came surprisingly soon - the emergency government of Heinrich Brüning was dismissed in May, and the new cabinet under Franz von Papen looked likely to be toppled by the Reichstag if it were allowed to meet, so Hindenburg and Papen gambled on an early dissolution.
The result was disastrous for pretty much everyone except the Nazis, or possibly including the Nazis - with the NSDAP holding over a third of the seats and the KPD another sixth, there was no path to a majority for anyone. With only the KPD, SPD, Centre/BVP, DNVP and NSDAP breaking into double figures of seats, the usual formula of a centre-right government relying on passive support from the centre-left or vice versa was completely unfeasible, and the SPD and KPD's mutual distrust made a popular front a nonstarter even if such an alliance could've won majority support (it probably wouldn't have, unless the Centre somehow got on board - considering Brüning and his faction were in ascendance at this point, I'd rate that unlikely). The only option left was another early election, which came in November and yielded another inconclusive result.
Returning to Franken, the religious split within the region is on clear display here. The former prince-bishoprics of Würzburg, Bamberg and Eichstätt showed strong majorities for the BVP (in grey), mirroring the general pattern in Catholic Germany, while the Protestant regions around Ansbach and Bayreuth (both formerly Hohenzollern principalities) were equally strong for the Nazis. The only areas not to vote for either were the small industrial cities of Schwabach and Schweinfurt, which both voted SPD by narrow margins - Nürnberg and Fürth, which had been SPD cities until then, came out with small Nazi pluralities due to the vote split between the SPD and KPD.
This is, of course, the most depressing free election held in the Weimar Republic, with the Nazis getting 37 percent of the vote and becoming the strongest party by far in Germany. We can see this very clearly in Franken, which as the home of the NSDAP congress grounds in Nürnberg-Dutzendteich and the offices of Der Stürmer, the Nazi tabloid (whose editor Julius Streicher was also the head of the local party organisation), was a key region for the Nazis. Coburg was the first city to fly the swastika flag from its town hall, the party having won an overall majority in the 1929 local elections, and in January 1932 gave Hitler honorary citizenship. In April, Hitler failed to be elected President, losing by a 15-point margin to Paul von Hindenburg, the incumbent, who had the backing of every party but the Nazis and the KPD. Even so, the Nazis looked with confidence to the next Reichstag elections, which came surprisingly soon - the emergency government of Heinrich Brüning was dismissed in May, and the new cabinet under Franz von Papen looked likely to be toppled by the Reichstag if it were allowed to meet, so Hindenburg and Papen gambled on an early dissolution.
The result was disastrous for pretty much everyone except the Nazis, or possibly including the Nazis - with the NSDAP holding over a third of the seats and the KPD another sixth, there was no path to a majority for anyone. With only the KPD, SPD, Centre/BVP, DNVP and NSDAP breaking into double figures of seats, the usual formula of a centre-right government relying on passive support from the centre-left or vice versa was completely unfeasible, and the SPD and KPD's mutual distrust made a popular front a nonstarter even if such an alliance could've won majority support (it probably wouldn't have, unless the Centre somehow got on board - considering Brüning and his faction were in ascendance at this point, I'd rate that unlikely). The only option left was another early election, which came in November and yielded another inconclusive result.
Returning to Franken, the religious split within the region is on clear display here. The former prince-bishoprics of Würzburg, Bamberg and Eichstätt showed strong majorities for the BVP (in grey), mirroring the general pattern in Catholic Germany, while the Protestant regions around Ansbach and Bayreuth (both formerly Hohenzollern principalities) were equally strong for the Nazis. The only areas not to vote for either were the small industrial cities of Schwabach and Schweinfurt, which both voted SPD by narrow margins - Nürnberg and Fürth, which had been SPD cities until then, came out with small Nazi pluralities due to the vote split between the SPD and KPD.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
It's done.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
To wit:
