1937 German Empire Election

The 1937 German Imperial elections were held on March 8, 1937 to elect 468 representatives to the Reichstag, the main parliamentary body of the German Empire. The Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands / Social Democratic Party (SPD) won the most seats and would go on to form government with support of the progressive Fortschrittiliche Volkspartei / People's Progressive Party (FVP) and liberal Nationalliberale Partei / National Liberal Party (NLP). Otto Wels would be elected chancellor by the Reichstag, with ministers primarily selected from the SPD and FVP parties. The elections were the first to be held under the updated 1936 German Imperial Constitution, which expanded suffrage to all adult males from age 19 and older, and changed the method of representation in the Reichstag significantly. The elections were also the first to take place following Black Monday.

The German National Unity Government, created in the wake of Black Monday to address Germany's economic challenges, contained members of the SPD, and policies attributed to the SPD were widely seen as addressing the worst effects of the economic depression at the time of the election. The campaign was notable for the comment of chancellor and Deutschkonservative Partei / German Conservative Party (DKP) leader Franz von Papen, who publicly admitted in a radio interview three days before the election that SPD policies had been the correct response to the economic disaster. Von Papen's DKP had been expected to vie competitively with the SPD prior to the start of the campaign, and their relegation to opposition party status was later blamed on von Papen's remarks.

The 1937 SPD government would largely be the same government that led the German Empire into the Second Weltkrieg.

Electoral Changes
The election was held under a new set of federal election laws that differed substantially from all previous federal elections in the German Empire. Changes included a lowered voting age - to 19 years of age by the day of the election, simplified registration and proof of residence requirements, and the end of the two-round, runoff election system in favour of a regionalized, proportional representation system. Under the new electoral laws, each of the Empire's constituent kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities, and free cities retained their unique statuses within the federal government, electing representatives of their traditional areas. However, representation was largely changed to a representation-by-population model, with the standard unit of allocation for a single seat in the Reichstag being set at 160,000 people. This led to smaller principalities, such as Lippe and Waldeck-Pyrmont being overrepresented, although their relative prominence was less than in previous elections due to an overall increase in seats from 397 to 468.

Of greater impact was the shift away from the historical constituencies that had heavily favoured a rural and often conservative-voting electorate to a regional model. Based on the 160,000 person threshold, heavily urbanized areas like the Ruhr valley, Berlin, and Saxony all received significantly more seats than had existed under the previous electoral setup. Berlin in particular increased its representation by 300%, as by 1936 it had become a city of almost 4 million residents, and sent 24 representatives to the Reichstag compared to the previous 6. The increased representation for urban, industrial workers is widely viewed as being central to the shift in the success of the SPD and their capacity to take a number of seats nearly proportional to their national share of the vote.

The proportional nature of regional elections for the national parliament is also credited with a large impact on the election. In particular it supported the SPD's overall seat numbers, as they won many individual electoral ridings such as Saxony-Altenburg and both Principalities of Reuss-Linnie, despite gathering under 25% of the vote in each. The DKP faced an inverted form of this, with relatively small losses in regional votes to other, more right-wing parties, resulting in lower seat representation than their share of the national vote.

Results
Nationally, the SPD increased their vote share significantly, surpassing their previous high seen in the 1912 German Federal election, and receiving over twice the seats of their closest competitor, the DKP. They performed exceptionally well in urbanized districts, receiving half the seats in Berlin, two-thirds in the Dusseldorf region of Prussia, and 23 of the 32 seats in Saxony. The SPD was also

Campaign
- The von Papen comment. - SPD organization. - Economy

- Schact and his role.