Webmapper critiques the media’s interactive maps of Germany’s recent Bundestag elections. I agree with Edward: my favourite is Der Spiegel’s flash map: it loads quickly and shows both local constituency results (red and black, a more appropriately Stendhalian version of the U.S.’s red vs. blue) and percentages of the popular vote for each party by constituency. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s flash map takes forever to load, but is feature-equivalent to Der Spiegel’s; plus it’s zoomable. Compared to either of these, Die Welt’s map is quite basic.

Of course, what these maps show is the results by constituency: in the complex German system, additional seats are awarded based on the popular vote (e.g., a party winning 10 per cent of the votes but only 5 per cent of the seats gets topped up).