Election data used in the GIS
Organizing elections in the Imperial era
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Organizing elections in the Weimar era
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Reporting local election results
When the polling place closed, the Wahlvorsteher and the Wahlmänner counted and recorded the ballots. These results were then telegraphed to the county administrator (Landrat). At some point in the 1880s - it varied by county - the Wahlvorsteher also telegraphed the results to the government-subsidized county newspaper (the Kreisblatt). In the week prior to an election, it was not uncommon for the editor of the Kreisblatt to run a front-page reminder asking to local chairs to forward their results. In the Regierungsbeirk Stade, Wahlvorstehern forwarded results both to their county newspaper and the the regional paper - the Stade Tageblatt - and by 1898 frequently to the provincial Hannoversche Courier. Wahlverstehern in East Friesland, given the dearth of local papers, set their results to the Ostfriesische Zeitung, but rarely to the Courier. In the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, results were published in the Amt newspapers and in the Nachrichter für Stadt und Land, the de facto state newspaper published in Oldenburg city.
While many individual telegrams conveying local results exist in the file of Landratsämter, few full lists of results survive. The Landräter telegraphed the results they received to the Regierungspräsident, and as a courtesy to the provincial governor (Oberpräsident). Only one full record of local results for the province of Hanover survived the Second World War - that for the election of January 1912. I have had more success finding official archived results for the Weimar era election in the records of the Hanoverian Landratsämter and at the Niedersächsiches Staatsarchiv in Oldenburg.
I have run comparisons of the extant government records with reports in the Kreis, regional, and provincial press, and found a near-perfect match; I would ascribe any difference to typesetting errors. Some blanks exist. The custom was to run an alphabitical list of polling places, although its varied over time and from newspaper to newspaper. When I came across a blank, I would check the Kreisblatt for several days after the list was published; sometimes a newer, complete list would be published, although more frequently the missing results would be mentioned in an addendum to the election follow-up. Sometimes, newspapers - say in 1912 - would publish a list of results in that year side-by-side with the results from 1907 and I could pick up reports in that fashion. If there were a run-off (Stichwahl) to determine the majority winner, the votes cast by candidate in the initial ballot (the Hauptwahl) were listed. Two lacunae in particular stand out. You can read about the peculiar situation that I encountered in tracking down the results for the county of Wittmund here. I also do not have results for the county of Osterholz for the election of June 1928. They are not available in the Kreisarchiv and every microfilmed copy of the Osterholz-Scharbecker Zeitung is missing the number in which the results were published. All-in-all, I spent considerable amount of time amassing as complete and accurate a list of votes as possible. I calculate that I have 99.7% of all polling place reports worked into my database. In those rare instances where I do not have local results, I have indicated "not available" (NA) in the dataset.