I am currently breaking my voting data down into milieu - Conservative, Catholic, Liberal, Socialist - as part of my work on Theodor Tantzen and the German Democrats. Temporally and intellectually consuming. I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to determine where to place the miniature splinter parties that collected votes, especially in the second half of the 1920s. 38 separate parties listed on the electors ballots! Press voices were apoplectic.
Along the way, I uncovered new polling place information the increases the accuracy of my data. One of the questions plaguing me has been the vast size of the polling places in southern Oldenburg 1. It seemed irrational that my polling places (Westerstede, Edewicht, Zwischenahn and Apen) were so large. Yesterday, reading an online PDF of Der Ämmerländer, available through the Landesbibliothek Oldenburg, I found that each of the four Ämter were divided into more realistically sized polling places. I was able to add 18 new places. In this way I can properly isolate the four larger Amt seats from their surrounding countryside. Sadly, only the 1919 issues of the newspaper are available online. I will need to return to Oldenburg. Boohoo.
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