Charts, facts and lots of Thomasse: Seven facts about the 2020 local elections in NRW

More Thomasse than women, election-weary Sauerlanders and a colorful state capital: an initial data analysis of the mayoral elections offers surprising insights from NRW.

• Why a soccer team can decide an election - and how a green mayor can too.

• The first data analysis of the 2020 local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia * throws a spotlight on the political landscape.

• We shed light on the most interesting aspects of the

  mayor election in NRW

  .

As soon as the nightly counting in

ended, everyone rushes to the detailed results.

We worked our way through the mayoral election dates for you.

And describe here seven interesting and unexpected facts about the local elections from the most populous of all federal states.

Among other things: Why even a football team can make the difference between victory and defeat.

When there are more Thomasse than women

There is little evidence of gender parity in NRW in 2020 either:

has been elected mayor in

the urban districts of NRW.

In contrast, there are

mayors of the seven cities in which a candidate was able to secure an absolute majority after the first ballot.

The runoff election is still pending in 15 cities.

But even if all women competing there won, the gender ratio would still be anything but balanced.

In Aachen, Bonn *, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne, Krefeld and Mülheim an der Ruhr - in six cities - women run the runoff election.

However, the result is not surprising: in the last elections in 2014 and 2015, Henriette Reker in Cologne * was the only woman in North Rhine-Westphalia to win a mayoral election.

Taking all mayors of North Rhine-Westphalia into account shows that since the last elections only around 11 percent of town halls have been run by women.

Münsterlanders want to vote, Sauerlanders rather not

Enthusiasm for elections in the Münsterland, genteel restraint in the Sauerland: A look at the turnout in the

North

shows that the value was

highest

in

at

.

The high voter turnout could be due to the village character due to the low population: in Heek only 6,939 people were eligible to vote.

On the other hand, voter turnout was lowest in

, which is much more urban

: only

of those eligible cast their votes there.

This is a tradition there: in 2015, only around 40 percent went to the mayoral election.

Two or three candidates to be elected - that was the most common scenario in the mayoral elections in North Rhine-Westphalia.

But the fact that a candidate

without

was not uncommon:

.

A completely different picture emerged in

with the longest of all candidate lists.

In the state capital,

applied

for the post of Lord Mayor.

Compared to the Bavarian election in the spring, however, this is almost little, there were communities with more than 25 candidates.

However, it was possible to nominate and vote for candidates on the evening of the election.

When a football team decides in a local election

The election results of the city of

show how decisive a single vote can be

.

SPD candidate Ulrike Westkamp won

an absolute majority

with just

.

And Christoph Dolle, who ran as an SPD candidate in

, was

short of

winning

the election.

The tightest duel in North Rhine-Westphalia was fought by Christiane Loeb and Sacha Reichelt in

: With only

, the two candidates were almost on par.

The runoff election will now show who will actually move into the town hall.

The clearest of all results was achieved by Berthold Bültgers in the Münsterland

.

With 95.7 percent of the vote, the mayoral candidate clearly won the election.

Bültgers, who ran with a collection list of the CDU, UWG, SPD and FDP parties, had no opponents.

CDU loses considerably, but remains dominant among mayors

Decline of the CDU?

Despite the losses in the national result, the Christian Democrats were and will remain the most popular party among the mayors.

The

secured 121 out of 263 elections that have already been decided.

101 municipalities accounted for voter associations and individual applicants.

Things went much worse for the

.

The Social Democrats were only able to win 39 town halls.

And not only that: the Social Democrats have lost the mayor's office in 29 cities and towns.

After all, there are still 46 run-off elections in which the SPD could score.

and

only won in one municipality each: Enrico Eppner (FDP) won the election in Hallenberg.

And Wolfgang Josef Pieper is the only mayor of the Greens after the first ballot.

He remains mayor of Telgte.

Where did the strongest parties score the most, where did their candidate not get a proverbial flower pot?

This is shown by further analysis.

So the worst result of the

with 11.5 percent in Extertal is still almost better than the strongest result of the

with 12.1 percent in Gelsenkirchen.

We generally consider results in which the candidate belongs to one party, as well as cases in which other parties have sometimes joined the nomination.

Another finding of the observation: How much decisive not only the party affiliation, but the person is, is shown with the smaller parties.

The FDP achieved values ​​between two and just under 65 percent;

even the left can record a success with 20 percent in a city like Hamm.

Where does the data come from, how we processed it

We automatically obtained and processed a lot of basic data for election reporting from all 400 municipalities.

We also used sources such as official bodies.

As a result, we tried various methods to work out the most interesting from the sheer mass of thousands of data: elements that are meaningful and interesting.

We also published a general article on our election methodology on the occasion of the 2020 local elections in Bavaria.