This stark national picture was mirrored quite clearly in Berlin, still Germany’s largest city by far. Here too the CDU’s votes fell somewhat, the Social Democrats plummeted even more steeply, and the AfD also saw large gains. Within city limits, however, there’s another trend that is deeply rooted and glaring for anyone who knows the city. Politically, Berlin remains overwhelmingly divided along the line of the Berlin Wall.
Electorally, Berlin’s East-West separation is almost as clear as ever. In the West, leafy outlying suburbs and some wealthier inner neighborhoods voted for the CDU, while citizens in the inner city voted in largest numbers for the SPD and Greens.
In the East, some suburbs also voted CDU—Merkel’s party seems unusual in having appeal across the East-West divide. Beyond that, however, the contrast is stark. By far the largest number of electoral districts voted for Die Linke, a leftist party originating partly from former communists and partly from left-wing defectors from the SPD. Meanwhile, AfD gained a footing out in the eastern suburbs. In keeping with national patterns, this anti-immigration party did better in Berlin districts that have fewer foreign-born citizens. [...]
Western boroughs have, as a whole, voted for either the CDU (represented by black) or the SPD (represented by red), while in the east they have gone for Die Linke (purple)—which has outperformed AfD when presented in terms of boroughs alone. The one exception is the central borough that voted Green (guess which color?), though on close inspection even this proves to be less exceptional than you might think. This is Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, a borough created from one western and one eastern borough amalgamated into one. The western part of the borough, a place with a strong counter-cultural tradition, voted mainly Green, while the eastern part voted mainly for Die Linke. In other words, the East-West divide here remains essentially the same as elsewhere.
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