Charts 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 become.

• 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, the observers pounce on the 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 federal state.

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.

On the other hand, after the first ballot alone,

among the mayors of the seven cities.

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, women run the runoff election.

In the end, this observation is not surprising either: In the 2014 and 2015 elections, Henriette Reker in Cologne * was the only woman in North Rhine-Westphalia to win a mayoral election.

And if you look at all of the 400 or so mayors of North Rhine-Westphalia, it becomes clear that only around eleven percent of town halls were run by women in the last election.

Münsterlanders want to vote, Sauerlanders rather not

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

North

shows that the value in

highest

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.

There it was possible to name and elect 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 each individual 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 parties CDU, UWG, SPD and FDP, had no opponent.

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 of 263 already decided elections.

Multiple lists, voter associations and individual applicants accounted for 101 municipalities.

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 keeps his post in the city 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 all results in which the candidate belongs to one party, as well as cases where 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 almost 65 percent;

even the left can record a respectable 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.