vcd (version 1.4-13)

Bundestag2005: Votes in German Bundestag Election 2005

Description

Number of votes by province in the German Bundestag election 2005 (for the parties that eventually entered the parliament).

Usage

data("Bundestag2005")

Format

A 2-way "table" giving the number of votes for each party (Fraktion) in each of the 16 German provinces (Bundesland):

No	Name	Levels
1	Bundesland	Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, ...
2	Fraktion	SPD, CDU/CSU, Gruene, FDP, Linke

Details

In the election for the German parliament “Bundestag”, five parties obtained enough votes to enter the parliament: the social democrats SPD, the conservative CDU/CSU, the liberal FDP, the green party “Die Gruenen” and the leftist party “Die Linke”. The table Bundestag2005 gives the number of votes for each party (Fraktion) in each of the 16 German provinces (Bundesland). The provinces are ordered from North to South.

The data have been obtained from the German statistical office (Statistisches Bundesamt) from the Web page given below.

Note that the number of seats in the parliament cannot be computed from the number of votes alone. The examples below show the distribution of seats that resulted from the election.

Examples

library(colorspace)
## The outcome of the election in terms of seats in the
## parliament was:
seats <- structure(c(226, 61, 54, 51, 222),
  .Names = c("CDU/CSU", "FDP",  "Linke", "Gruene", "SPD"))

## Hues are chosen as metaphors for the political parties
## CDU/CSU: blue, FDP: yellow, Linke: purple, Gruene: green, SPD: red
## using the respective hues from a color wheel with
## chroma = 60 and luminance = 75
parties <- rainbow_hcl(6, c = 60, l = 75)[c(5, 2, 6, 3, 1)]
names(parties) <- names(seats)
parties

## The pie chart shows that neither the SPD+Gruene coalition nor
## the opposition of CDU/CSU+FDP could assemble a majority.
## No party would enter a coalition with the leftists, leading to a
## big coalition.
pie(seats, clockwise = TRUE, col = parties)

## The regional distribution of the votes, stratified by province,
## is shown in a mosaic display: first for the 10 Western then the
## 6 Eastern provinces.
data("Bundestag2005")
votes <- Bundestag2005[c(1, 3:5, 9, 11, 13:16, 2, 6:8, 10, 12),
                       c("CDU/CSU", "FDP", "SPD", "Gruene", "Linke")]
mosaic(votes, gp = gpar(fill = parties[colnames(votes)]),
  spacing = spacing_highlighting, labeling = labeling_left,
  labeling_args = list(rot_labels = c(0, 90, 0, 0), pos_labels = "center",
  just_labels = c("center","center","center","right"), varnames = FALSE),
  margins = unit(c(2.5, 1, 1, 12), "lines"),
  keep_aspect_ratio = FALSE)