What Weimar election results tell us

 

How many times when reading a textbook or an article do you skip over the stats. Often? Always? If the book is good, the answer should be never because stats can be extremely useful, and a good book wouldn’t be wasting your time.

Take a look at the stats for elections in Weimar Germany below. On their own they help you describe what was going on:

 

Weimar Election Results

 

Percentage of votes cast followed by the number of seats won

 

Party

Jan, 1919

June, 1920

May, 1924

Dec, 1924

May, 1928

Sept, 1930

July, 1932

Nov, 1932

Mar,

1933

KPD

 

2.1 – 4

12.6 -62

9 – 45

10.6 – 54

13.1 – 77

14.3 – 89

16.9 – 100

12.3 – 81

USPD

7.6 – 22

17.9 – 84

0.8 – 0

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPD

37.9 – 165

21.6 – 102

20.5 – 100

26 – 131

29.8 – 153

24.5 – 143

21.6 – 133

20.4 – 121

18.3 – 120

DDP

18.6 – 75

8.3 – 39

5.7 – 28

6.3 – 32

4.9 – 25

3.8 – 20

1 – 4

1 – 2

0.9 – 5

Z

19.7 – 91

13.6 – 64

13.4 – 65

13.6 – 69

12.1 – 62

11.8 – 68

12.5 – 75

11.9 – 70

11.2 – 74

BVP

with Z

4.3 – 21

2.2 – 16

3.7 – 19

3 – 16

3 – 19

3,4 – 22

3.1 – 20

incl with Z – 10

DVP

4.4 – 19

13.9 – 65

9.2 – 45

10.1 – 51

8.7 – 45

4.5 – 30

1.2 – 7

1.9 – 11

1.1 – 2

DNVP

10.3 – 44

14.9 – 71

19.5 – 95

20.5 – 103

14.2 – 73

7 – 41

5.9 – 37

8.3 – 52

8 – 52

Nazi

 

 

6.6 – 32

3 – 14

2.6 – 12

18.3 – 107

37.3 – 230

33.1 – 196

43.9 – 288

Others

1.5

3.4

9.8

7.8

14.1

13.9

2.8

3.4

4.3

Turnout

82.7%

78.4%

76.3%

77.7%

74.6%

81.4%

83.4%

79.9%

88%

 

Parties

The Communist Party (KPD)

Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD)

The Social Democratic Party (SPD)

The Democratic Party (DDP)

The Centre Party (Z)

The Bavarian People’s Party (BVP)

The People’s Party (DVP)

The Nationalist People’s Party (DNVP)

The National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP – Nazi)

 

You can see that there were (a) a lot of elections – nine in just fourteen years – and (b) a lot of parties – nine plus “others”. This suggests a decidedly unstable democracy. It doesn’t tell us why, but we can see that it was very unstable. So, straight away we have got something from the stats: an important conclusion supported by evidence.

So far so good, but what else can we learn from these stats? We can see the way in which the combined vote of the socialist parties – the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) – plummeted in 1924, the Independents ceasing to exist as a separate party.  We can see the decline of the liberal parties and the conservative Right-wing parties as the Nazi vote increases remarkably in 1930. Look at the votes of the People’s Party (DVP) and the Nationalist People’s Party (DNVP) and, of course, the Nazi vote. And if you take your time to study the chart carefully, you will also note that the Nazi Party made the single biggest gain from one election to the next in 1930.

What we are in fact looking at is a drop in support after 1923 for parties prepared to try and make Weimar work, and a rise in support for parties, of Left and Right, that declared themselves opposed to Weimar (by the 1930s this would include the Centre Party). You will also note how two very different parties – The Centre Party (Z), particularly when its sister-party, the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP) is included, and the Communist Party (KPD), once it got going – were able to maintain a remarkably steady, and not insignificant, share of the vote.

All of this can simply be seen by a careful look at the stats as they are presented, though it does require you to know a little about the parties themselves. It doesn’t explain a lot though. To do that, you need to apply knowledge and understanding to the bare data. Two dates seem to be significant: 1924 and 1930. So, what happened at these times? You should know that in 1923, after Germany had failed to make its reparation payments, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr; and in 1929 the American stock market crashed bringing about the Great Depression. This now helps explain why German voters changed their allegiances so radically. And that explanation will be a lot better if you can take a step further and project the suffering – its nature as well as its depth – that Germans experienced at these two key points in Weimar Germany’s history. So, hyperinflation and its impact on different groups will feature strongly in explaining the 1924 election results, while unemployment will feature strongly in explaining the results post-1929.

The turnouts were also very high. You should ask yourself what this signifies. A very strong interest in politics is the answer. So, in that sense, you could conclude that democracy was working, the German people were participating in the process. Compare the turnout to that in your country today. If it’s anything like mine, you would say that apathy or even distrust is winning, not democracy.

But what do the stats say about the nature of Proportional Representation, the system used in Weimar Germany (and indeed in Germany today) to turn votes into seats. Did it encourage a large number of parties to participate? Did it contribute to the instability? These are questions that the stats will not answer, but they might well be used as evidence to show the degree of instability that existed throughout Weimar’s life.

So, I hope you see that a careful reading of stats, coupled with a bit of thought, can be a very worthwhile exercise. 

 

Please note, this short piece is repeated in IB Skills.