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Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2942745
1
The Electoral Supporter Base of the Alternative for Germany: an
Analysis of a Panel Study of German Voters in 2015-16
Achim Goerres, University of Duisburg-Essen (Achim.Goerres@uni-due.de)
Dennis Spies, University of Cologne (spies@wiso.uni-koeln.de)
Staffan Kumlin, University of Oslo and Institute for Social Research Oslo
(staffan.kumlin@stv.uio.no)
Paper to be presented
at the annual conference of the Specialist Group on Political Economy of the German Political
Science Association (DVPW) at the WSI Düsseldorf, 30-31 March 2017
Abstract
Using a recent representative survey, we provide the first analysis of the supporter base of the
AFD since the parties’ split and ideological reorientation in mid-2015. Deriving our hypotheses
on AFD sympathizers from the comparative literature of Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs)
in Western Europe, our empirical findings strongly indicate that the electoral success of Germany
newest right-wing party is due to the same set of socio-economic, attitudinal and contextual
factors proven so important to explain the fortunes of PRRPs in other countries. In sum, right-
wing political attitudes concerning immigration, political dissatisfaction, fears of personal
economic decline, as well as gender and socialization effects make up the list of the most relevant
explanatory variables. There is little support for recent interpretations, seeing the rise of the AFD
as a result of political protest against mainstream parties alone. Rather, our analyses strongly
suggest that the party has already managed to form a coherent supporter base motivated by both
cultural and economically right-wing policy preferences. Its success also mirrors old-established
geographical structures of right-wing voting in Germany with regional results of the
Republikaner in 1994 explaining part of the story. With regard to the mid- to long-term electoral
fortunes of the AFD, this electoral alliance might not only turn out highly successful but also very
long-lived.
The data collection for this survey “Der Wohlfahrtsstaat in Deutschland” was funded by a grant of the Norwegian
Research Council to Staffan Kumlin. Achim Goerres designed the survey and coordinated the data collection with
YouGov Germany. Further input to the questionnaire was given by Staffan Kumlin and Rune Karlsen. Achim
Goerres designed the research design of this study and carried out the empirical analysis. Dennis Spies was
responsible for the theoretical set-up of and wrote the first draft of the paper. All authors finalized the paper together.
We thank the army of pre-testers for the set-up of the questionnaire.
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2942745
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1. Introduction
Founded in early 2013, the Alternative for Germany (AFD) has already become one of the most
successful newly founded parties in Germany for decades. While the party slightly failed to pass
the five-percent threshold for parliamentary representation in its first Bundestag election in 2013,
it gained 7.1% of all votes in the European Parliament election of 2014. On the sub-national
level, AFD candidates have already entered 9 out of 16 regional Länder parliaments and several
local municipalities. Notwithstanding serious internal disputes about personal and programmatic
strategy, recent polls (January 2017) see the AFD well above 10 percent of all votes on the
national level, only one year before the next federal election in 2017.
From its very start, the AFD’s ideology has been the subject of intense public debate.
Starting with the central demand of ending Germany’s contributions to the EU rescue packages –
and thereby also ending Germanys participation in the EURO – the party soon was suspected to
advocate radical right-wing positions with regard to questions of immigration and immigrant
integration policies, including the closing of German borders for asylum seekers, a mosque-ban,
and several repatriation and welfare chauvinist demands (Franzmann 2016; Lewandowsky 2015;
Berbuir et al. 2015). This combination of EU-sceptic, anti-immigrant, and cultural conservative
positions, combined with a pronounced populist rhetoric, has caused harsh verbal reactions of
mainstream politicians, including comparisons of the AFD’s programmatic with that of National
Socialism (Spiegel Online 2016b). In any case, the rise of the AFD has surely ended Germany’s
rare status to be a Western European lacking a successful populist right-wing party.
Given its electoral success, it comes at little surprise that the AFD has also raised
considerable interest from political scientists. So far, academia have mainly followed the public
discourse and spend a great deal of attention on the programmatic appeal of the new party, trying
to classify it as eurosceptic, populist, national-conservative, nativist, radical or even extreme right
3
(Arzheimer 2015; Berbuir, Lewandowsky, and Siri 2015; S. T. Franzmann 2016; Niedermayer
2015). In contrast, only few studies have addressed the causes of AFD support looking at the
party’s voters, and such analyses further have been restricted by low numbers of respondents,
potential sample-bias and – most important – by the rapidly changing character of the AFD,
which potentially makes even the findings of recent analyses already outdated.
With our study we want to address these shortcomings offering the first representative
analysis of AFD supporters after the split of the party in mid-2015. Based on recent (May 2016)
survey gathered within a two-wave panel structure with local identifiers at the postcode level
(PLZ5), we are not only able to identify the socioeconomic profile and political motivations of
AFD supporters, but also to analyze the impact of local contextual variables in a sophisticated
and detailed way. Deriving our theoretical expectations from the literature on the voters of
Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) in Western Europe, we can thus draw a comprehensive
picture on AFD supporters and motivations.
The paper is structured as follows: The next section presents a summary on the short but
turbulent history of the AFD since its foundation in 2013. This is necessary, as the party started
not only with a different personal but also with a different programmatic focus compared with
what we observe for the years 2015 and 2016. We than summarize theoretical arguments on the
drivers of PRRP support in Western Europe, distinguishing between individual and contextual-
level explanations. After describing our data and methods we then test these theoretical
expectations analyzing the supporters of the AFD and compare them with the supporters of the
National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) – a traditional Extreme Right Party with an
openly racist programmatic. We conclude that AFD supporters can very well be described by
variables deducted from the literature on PRRP support in Western Europe and discuss the
parties’ future electoral fortunes in the final section.
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2. The AFD from 2013 to 2016
In contrast to many other countries of Western Europe, until very recently parties of the far-right
have had a hard time on the German electoral market. Surely, Germany’s 20th century history
explains the low appeal of any right-wing ideology in the mainstream to a great deal. Not only
were the devastating experiences of the Nazi regime and World War II still alive in the early
years of the German Republic, also the student revolts of the 1960s critically addressed the role
their fathers and grandfathers played during the Nazi-regime. In more recent decades, Germany’s
role for European history and especially its war crimes were frequently discussed with a great
deal of public attention. Shortly after German reunification, politically motivated assaults on
asylum seekers again resulted in debates on the lessons to be drawn from the Nazi-era – debates
strongly linked to questions of immigration and integration policies. As a result of these intensely
fought debates on ways of “coming to terms with the past”, any right-wing political party risks of
becoming compared with or equated with the Nazi ideology – a capital charge in Germany.
Because of this extraordinary critical public climate, openly racist, xenophobic and even
nationalistic parties as the Republicans, the National Democratic Party of Germany, and the
German People's Union never made it into the national parliament – despite some rare electoral
successes on the subnational level.
It is in this climate that the AFD entered German politics in 2013. However, the early
AFD did not raise attention with a political agenda focusing on a set of core right-wing political
issues but with a critical stance on another of German politics’ holy cows: the countries
membership in the EU. Highly critical of Germanys’ financial guarantees to Greece and other EU
member states during the European financial crisis, the AFD took on a policy stance strictly
5
separating it from any other party presented in the Bundestag, demanding to end Germany’s
participation in the EURO and the reintroduction of the Deutsche Mark, ending bailouts for banks
or member states via taxpayers money, and finally demanding the “orderly dissolution of the
Eurozone” (Berbuir, Lewandowsky, and Siri 2015; Arzheimer 2015; Schmitt-Beck 2014). The
main advocate of this political agenda was a newcomer to German politics: Bernd Lucke, a
professor of economics with a pronounced market-liberal stance and very present in German
media during the months of the financial crisis in and before 2013. Together with some former
second-rank CDU members, including national-conservative politician and newspaper publisher
Alexander Gauland, Lucke founded the AFD in February 2013. Nearly exclusively focusing on
an agenda of soft Euroscepticism1, the party was not only able to win 4.7 percent of votes in the
Bundestag election of 2013, but also a 7.4 percent in the election to the European Parliament in
2014. By then, also Hans-Olaf Henkel, former chairmen of the German employer organization
BDI, had joined the AFD, another prominent advocate of a more market-liberal German political
economy.
As many other newly founded parties, the AFD was soon plagued by internal disputes
over candidates and programmatic decisions. However, in case of the AFD these conflicts were
fought out with great intensity, especially as the party still had to formulate an official party
program worth its name. Internal conflicts already started in 2014 when the party had to decide
which EP faction it wished to join, economic liberals like Lucke and Henkel favoring the
Conservatives but some sub-national leaders favoring a closer alliance with parties as the British
UKIP or the French Front National. While Lucke decided this debate in his favor, it became very
clear that two fractions exist inside the AFD, one economically oriented with Euroscepticism as
the dominant issue, one national-conservative and increasingly focusing on the issue of
1 In contrast to hard Eurosceptics, as e.g. the British UKIP, the AFD never demanded Germany to leave the EU but
only to leave the Eurozone (Franzmann 2016).
6
immigration (Franzmann 2016; Lewandowsky 2015; Berbuir, Lewandowsky, and Siri 2015).
After the election to EP in May 2014, the latter group gained influence and was able to enter two
additional sub-national parliaments with campaigns focusing this core topic (Franzmann 2016).
These internal conflicts then escalated in 2015, a year in which German politics were first
and foremost dominated by the issue of immigration. The topic became very prominent already in
late 2014, when the mass demonstrations of the PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the
Islamisation of the West) movement started. PEGIDA, a nationalist, islamophobic, far-right
protest movement, called for the enforcement of existing laws to curb immigration, particularly
for Muslim immigrants. In Dresden, where the first demonstrations started, up to 20.000
participants rallied every Monday – and still 1.000 still continue to do so in mid-2016 – numbers
which make PEGIDA one of the most successful protest movements in German history. While all
political parties and the overwhelming part of the German media declared the demonstrations as
inacceptable and occasionally racist, the national-conservative wing of the AFD was much more
open to such demands, Alexander Gauland even declaring the participants as “natural allies”
(Zeit Online 2015) of his party.
The appropriate strategy to deal with PEGIDA, the issue of immigration, and also the
exceptional status of founder Bernd Lucke inside the AFD, then culminated in the party congress
of July 2015. Right before this meeting, Lucke publicly addressed AFD members, including the
party leadership, not to follow a strategy marked by “system-critical, fundamentally oppositional
and nationalistic” demands and to stick to the much more moderate party platforms formulated
for the last Bundestag and EP elections (Steffen 2015). The delegates’ reaction was very clear,
and Lucke lost the election to the AFDs’ federal spokesman against national-conservative
candidate Frauke Petry with 40:60. As a reaction to this, within two weeks Lucke organized his
supporters, declared his retreat from the AFD, and founded the Alliance for Progress and
7
Renewal (ALFA) as a split-up from the AFD. The factional dispute was solved in favor of the
national conservatives.
Every observer seeing the AFD paralyzed by these internal divisions and the separation of
ALFA and consequently on the decline also electorally, was soon proven wrong. While ALFA
recently plays the role of a splinter party in German politics2, the AFD was able to rapidly
increase its supporter base since mid-2015, especially – but by no means exclusively – in Eastern
Germany. The main reason for this surely lies in the entering of around one million people
applying for asylum status in Germany in the second half of 2015. This unprecedented “refugee
crisis” surely made immigration the most salient topic of German politics, and, as Alexander
Gauland stated, was “a present” (Spiegel Online 2015) for the AFD. Since July 2015, the party
rose from 3 to 11 percent in national surveys and was able to enter several subnational
parliaments, with vote shares between 5.5 (Bremen) and 24.3 percent (Saxony-Anhalt). This
electoral rise was accompanied by a further radicalization of the AFD, including public
discussions on whether it is covered by law to shot at people illegally crossing the German border
(Spiegel Online 2016a) and the recent statement of AFD chairmen Jörg Meuthen to break with
the consensus not to cooperate with the extreme right NPD3 in case of being elected to the
parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
3. Explaining the Rise of the AFD
As this short history of the AFD illustrates, the party started as a Eurosceptic one issue party in
2013 but now has developed a program very much focusing on the topic of immigration and
asylum rights. At both of these stages, the party has been described as following a populist
2 In our survey of May 2016, 70 % of voters did not recognise ALFA.
3 The NPD is now in her second party-ban proceeding before the Federal Constitutional Court because it is seen as a
specific danger to the fundamental principles of the German constitution. The party has also been observed by the
Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution for years.
8
approach to politics, dividing the world into the common people versus either a bureaucratic and
undemocratic political elite residing in Brussels and Berlin, or into German nationals versus
immigrants and asylum seekers (Berbuir, Lewandowsky, and Siri 2015; Lewandowsky 2015).
This mix of national, anti-immigrant and populist appeals is not new to Western European
politics and has motivated an encompassing literature (see the reviews in: Van der Brug and
Fennema 2007; Kitschelt 2007; Arzheimer 2009) on who votes for these “populist” (Mudde
2007), “radical right” (Kitschelt 1995), “extreme right” (Arzheimer 2009) or “anti-immigrant”
(Van der Brug, Fennema, and Tillie 2005) parties.4 While we do not intend to contradict previous
findings on the ideology of the AFD itself, we think that in order to analyze the AFD support
among German voters, the comparative literature on the voters of PRRPs is an appropriate
starting point. Thus, we derive our theoretical arguments from this literature, structuring them
into those addressing the individual characteristics of AFD supporters, i.e. their socioeconomic
status and political attitudes, and those addressing the impact of contextual variables, most
prominently immigration and economic conditions. For each group of explanatory variables, we
also summarize the few results of previous studies on the AFD’s electoral support base.
Socioeconomic Status
Starting with the individual drivers, earlier studies have stressed that PRRPs raise their support
from voters with a clearly defined socioeconomic profile (Kitschelt 1995; Betz 1993). As far as
demographics are concerned, time and again research has reported that men are much more likely
to support PRRPs than women. Also, the Radical Right draws disproportional strong support
4 Given the diversity of labels for the same party family, it should be noted that the discussion about the adequate
term is indeed often “a question of labels not of substance” (Giugni and Koopmans 2007: 489). This statement could
insofar be agreed upon, as the use of different labels does rarely result in a disagreement over the Western European
parties that should be regarded as PRRPs, the term we use in this article.
9
from voters of younger and older age groups, while it is underrepresented among middle-aged
voters (for many: Arzheimer and Carter 2003; Van der Brug, Fennema, and Tillie 2005).
Regarding social status, previous studies have also claimed that lower strata are more
likely to vote for PRRPs and most prominently Georg Betz has described the supporters of the
Radical Right as the “losers of modernity” (Betz 1994: 25). In this view, PRRP supporters are
lowly educated, either unemployed or at least severely threatened by unemployment (Lubbers,
Gijsberts, and Scheepers 2002; Rydgren 2004; Carter 2005; Ivarsflaten 2005). Working in low-
skilled, low-paid jobs in the manufacturing sector or being members of the petty bourgeoisie
(artisans, small shop-owners and independents), both social groups are in a socioeconomic
position very comparable to this of immigrants. Therefore, they are expected to perceive the new
arrivers as a threat to their own economic well-being, as they directly have to compete with them
over limited resources (Scheve and Slaughter 2001).
The view that PRRPs are mainly supported by lower social strata still is very influential in
both academia and public discourse. However, more recent developments question this
interpretation at least partly as many of todays’ PRRPs are just much more successful than their
predecessors during the 1990s (Mudde 2013). With vote shares above 30 percent for the Swiss
Peoples Party and a neck-to-neck race between the mainstream and the Freedom Parties’
candidate for the Austrian presidency in 2016, it seems misleading to stress the low social status
of PRRP supporters any longer – at least not for those highly successful examples. More recent
international comparative studies have already acknowledged these new conditions and report
that also middle-educated voters are very much attracted by PRRPs while only a university
degree still seems to be line of educational separation (Arzheimer and Carter 2006; Rydgren
2008). With regard to household income, several studies have claimed that also certain high-
income natives are especially unwilling to support redistribution between natives and foreigners
10
as they might burden the lion’s share of this via their higher tax contributions (Burgoon, Koster,
and Egmond 2012). As long as such economic consideration translate into voting behavior, both
low and high income voters might thus be more attracted by PRRPs.
Turning to previous findings on the role of socioeconomic variables for AFD support,
genuine scientific contributions are very rare and we know only two studies addressing these
effects (Schmitt-Beck 2014; Berbuir, Lewandowsky, and Siri 2015), both relying on data from
the AFD’s first Bundestag election of 2013. Both studies report few significant socioeconomic
effects, except gender, but as the AFD has underwent significant programmatic changes since
2013, the up-to-datedness of these findings might be questioned.5 For more recent findings, we
therefore have to rely on the results of surveys from several market research institutes published
in media. For these purely descriptive, hardly comparable and barely verifiable results, it is very
hard to come up with a unified picture on the social structure of AFD voters, which has been
described as consisting of (a) highly educated, high income, upper-middle class citizens in their
middle ages (Greive 2016), of (b) younger or older, medium educated, working-class and lower
middle-class citizens (Hebel et al. 2014), or of (c) younger and middle-aged unemployed or
lower status blue-collar workers (Tomik 2016). As additional problems stem from the regional
focus of most of these surveys and potentially also from differences in the period of investigation,
this inconsistency is hardly surprising. Besides the gender-effect, and as indicated by several
subnational election results, the only noteworthy finding is that the AFD gains more support in
the Eastern than in the Western part of Germany. If these regional differences in support can be
related to differences in the populations’ socioeconomic structure, political attitudes or economic
5 Also problematic, the study by Berbuir et al. uses data from an online voting advice application, which might lead
to non-representative results as the authors note themselves. The findings, that AFD supporters are both young and
have disproportional high incomes, thus might be due to sampling bias.
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and political context, is a question repeatedly asked but which so far haven’t been analyzed in a
sophisticated way.
Political Attitudes
Beside socioeconomic variables, support for PRRPs is mostly explained by three clusters of
politically relevant attitudes: issue preferences with regard to certain policies and most
importantly with regard to immigration, political dissatisfaction, and unfavorable attitudes
towards immigrants and other out-groups (Lubbers, Gijsberts, and Scheepers 2002; Rydgren
2008; Arzheimer 2008). In fact, many authors claim that such attitudes are much more important
drivers of PRRP support than socioeconomic status (Van der Brug, Fennema, and Tillie 2005) or
assume that certain social strata are more likely to hold a distinct combination of attitudes, which
then explains their support for PRRPs (Kitschelt 2007).
Starting with the issue preferences of PRRP voters, the most common finding is that they
are very critical of immigration, especially so if immigration stems from poorer, ethnically
different and most importantly Muslim countries (Rydgren 2008; Arzheimer 2008; Ceobanu and
Escandell 2010). This critique is motivated by both cultural as well as economic concerns on the
consequences of immigration for the receiving countries. With regard to cultural motivations,
many PRRP supporters seem to be motivated by a mixture of xenophobia, racism and most
importantly ethno-pluralism – the belief that in order to preserve the unique national culture of
different people, they have to be kept separated (Betz and Johnson 2004). While Rydgren (2008)
convincingly argues that these cultural related attitudes are somehow related but should be
distinguished in their effect on PRRP support, for the sake of our interest it seems sufficient to
state that PRRP supporters are very critical of any policy increasing the number of immigrants in
their country.
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While the relevance of immigration-related attitudes for PRRP support is unanimously
shared in the literature, the relevance of issue preferences with regard to economic and social
policies is a long-debated topic. The relevant question here is if PRRP supporters are solely
motivated by the issue of immigration or if they also hold certain economy-related issue
preferences distinguishing them from other voters. Not less than four positions can be identified.
First, most authors argue that economic issues are of little relevance for PRRP supporters and
also the parties themselves, which they see motivated mainly by an nationalist ideology (Mudde
2007: 119). Second, earlier contributions point out that PRRPs are not interested only in
culturally-related issues but also in economic questions. One of the most prominent advocates of
this view was Kitschelt (1995), who argued that the electoral success of PRRPs hinged on a
combination of nationalism and laissez-faire economic policies aiming at less redistribution,
lower taxation and reduced welfare expenditure (see also Betz 1994). Third, and in sharp contrast
to Kitschelt, several authors now present PRRPs as the new working class parties, showing that
working-class voters are already the most important group among PRRP supporters (Betz 2002;
Ignazi 2003). The common inference from these changes is that PRRPs have abandoned their
former market-liberal positions in favour of more centrist agendas, in line with the preferences of
their now more left-leaning supporters (Aichholzer et al. 2014; De Lange 2007; Kitschelt 2004;
Kitschelt 2007; McGann and Kitschelt 2005; Schumacher and Kersbergen 2014; Van Spanje and
Van der Brug 2007). Finally, and somehow bringing the former views together, authors as
Ivarsflaten (2005) state that PRRPs are able to raise support form both economic right- and left-
leaning voters, as they downplay economic issues in favor of their anti-immigration agenda.
While this is seen as a very promising electoral approach in the short run (Rovny 2013), in the
long run economic issues might become very problematic for PRRPs as their supporter base is
internally divided, especially with regard to questions of taxation and redistribution between
13
poorer and better-off natives. This division might make these parties very vulnerable if
immigration is not high on the political agenda.
Coming to political dissatisfaction, PRRP supporters are seen to be highly critical of both
mainstream political personal and institutions (e.g. governments, established parties and media)
and therefore attracted by the populist rhetoric of the Radical Right (Kitschelt 2002; Lubbers,
Gijsberts, and Scheepers 2002; Van der Brug and Fennema 2003). If this dissatisfaction is caused
by beliefs in the arrogant, corruptive and elitist character of mainstream politicians or simply in
the unresponsiveness of the political system towards the distinct policy demands of PRRP
supporters thereby is an open question, as is exemplified by the debate about the protest
motivation of PRRP supporters. In one perspective, PRRP supporters are first of all not motivated
by their own policy preferences but by emotional and irrational feelings of dissatisfaction. Their
vote for PRRPs is thus “a vote against things” (Mayer and Perrineau 1992: 134) used
instrumentally to show discontent for “those up there”. The second perspective questions this line
of reasoning and points to the distinct policy preferences of PRRP supporters, which make their
protest related to their right-wing ideology. In this view, a vote for PRRPs cannot be considered
to be protest-driven without rendering the protest concept meaningless (Van der Brug and
Fennema 2007: 479). Whatever the relationship between rational policy and irrational protest
motivations looks like, the literature points us to include measures for both when analyzing
support for PRRPs.
Finally, and reflecting the ethnocentric and anti-elitist ideology of PRRPs, their supporters
show a strong tendency to separate the world into in-groups and out-groups. Whatever informal
or formal group an individual associates with constitutes his in-group while an out-group includes
individuals who, in the eyes of in-group members, do not share their own physical or social traits.
Group boundaries are a long-established feature of social psychology (Tajfel et al. 1971) and
14
have significant implications for political behavior in general and for PRRP support in particular.
Most importantly, group demarcations based on nationality, ethnicity or race and are among the
most salient in Western Europe (Brewer 1979) and are clearly related to the PRRPs’ core issue of
immigration. As Larsen (2011) reports analyzing the perceptions of Western Europeans toward
non-Western immigrants, many natives are hesitant to accept out-group members as neighbors,
colleagues or family relatives and question their work ethics. Such kinds of negative out-group
perceptions are rather widespread in Europe (Crepaz 2006; Senik, Stichnoth, and Van der
Straeten 2009; Coenders, Lubbers, and Scheepers 2005) but should analytically be separated
from policy preferences towards immigration – even if both sets of political attitudes can be
expected to be correlated. What also makes group boundaries an interesting explanatory variable
for studying PRRP support is the fact that people holding negative out-group perceptions often
hold very positive in-group views (Putnam 2007). In our case, PRRP supporters might thus not
only be very critical of immigrants but hold significantly more positive feelings towards their
own in-group of German co-ethnics.
While previous findings on the political attitudes of AFD supporters are burdened by the
same problems already discussed for the role of socioeconomic factors, much seems to fit the
assumptions of the literature on PRRP support. Not only are AFD supporters very critical of the
recent immigration and especially the asylum policy of Germany, they also hold more negative
views on both immigrants and especially Muslim immigrants than voters of other parties
(Berbuir, Lewandowsky, and Siri 2015). Also, they express strong feelings of political alienation
and especially do not feel represented by the great coalition lead by Angela Merkel
(TAGESSCHAU 2016). Many AFD supporters also suspect German media to have engaged in a
secret alliance with the mainstream political parties and therefore accuse it of censoring news in
favor of the government, especially so news regarding misbehavior and crimes conducted by
15
asylum seekers (Zeit Online 2014). In contrast, empirical findings on the economic preferences of
AFD supporters beside welfare chauvinism are completely absent.
Socioeconomic Context
Contextual variables as the populations’ ethnic composition (number of immigrant and asylum
seekers) and economic conditions (unemployment rates) are often taken into account to explain
variation in PRRP support between countries (Knigge 1998; Arzheimer 2009; Golder 2003) or
between regions inside one country (DiGiusto and Jolly 2008; Ford, Goodwin, and Cutts 2012).
In order to answer the question of why such variables may be of importance in explaining
Radical Right support, we can build on theories of group threat and realistic conflict theory
(Forbes 1997; Quillian 1995) on the one, and contact theory (Allport 1954) on the other hand.
Starting with the conflict-laden assumptions, group threat theories argue that the in-group
of native voters feels superior to the subordinated out-group of immigrants and believe that
public resources should be exclusively reserved for in-group members. Immigrants or asylum
seekers claiming these formerly exclusive benefits reinforce economic as well as cultural threats
associated with out-group members, which in turn increases natives’ support for PRRPs in order
to end or restrict inter-ethnic competition. Two kinds of causes are expected to increase group
threat and resource conflicts (Quillian 1995). The first is, rather obviously, the size of the
subordinated out-group as larger out-groups increase the competition for scarce resources. The
second cause is related to economic conditions: the threat that natives associate with increasing
numbers of immigrants might be more intense in times of economic hardship, either because
natives blame new arrivals for the worsening economic conditions, or simply because
competition for public resources is felt more acutely. Furthermore, we might expect
multiplicative effects of out-group size and economic hardship, as both variables should increase
16
how threatened native voters feel when confronted with immigration (Quillian 1995; Semyonov,
Raijman, and Gorodzeisky 2006).
Another popular theory contradicts such conflict-laden assumptions and focus on natives’
prejudices rather than on economic competition: the contact theory (Allport 1954). The theory
argues that intense contact between members of different ethnic groups will reduce prejudice and
xenophobia as firsthand information about ethnic out-group members becomes available. On side
of native voters, contact should also reduce both economic and cultural concerns about
immigrants. As the chance for personal contact between natives and immigrants is arguably
higher in areas with many out-group members, both the share of immigrant and asylum seekers
should reduce natives’ concerns and thereby also their support for PRRPs. Theoretically, this
effect should be independent from the wider economic situation.
Both grand theories have been intensively tested in previous cross-national studies on
PRRP support resulting in very mixed findings, some in favor of competition some in favor of
contact theory (see Arzheimer 2009 for a more recent overview). While differences in data
quality, methods applied, and period of investigation surely explain part of this confusion,
another source of misspecification is due to different levels of analysis. As both group threat as
well as contact theory point out, natives’ daily personal experiences are of great relevance for
their attitudes towards immigrants, much more than rather abstract national developments. Thus,
theory advises us to model both the proportion of migrants as well as economic conditions as
close to natives’ daily experiences as possible (Taylor 1998) in order not to fall victim to an
ecological fallacy. Consequently, we will focus on the local level as expressed by postal codes
when analyzing the effect of the socioeconomic context for AFD support.
Turning to previous interpretations about the relevance of the socioeconomic context for
AFD support, both conflict but especially contact arguments have been stressed. Regarding
17
economic conditions, many observers claim that the AFD gains disproportional support in
regions with problematic economic conditions (Elmer and Hebel 2014), which in a national
perspective are often located in the Eastern part of Germany. In contrast to theoretical
expectations, these are, however such regions that show very low shares of foreigners. Therefore,
especially contact arguments have been stressed in order to explain the disproportional high
support for the AFD in Eastern Germany – but such arguments do neither take local differences
in the number of foreigners into account, nor do they acknowledge the fact that also in Eastern
Germany the number of asylum seekers has rapidly increased most recently.
4. Data and Methods
In order to analyze the support base of the Alternative for Germany, we make use of a recent
survey conducted in May 2016. This survey was initially designed to analyze the welfare state
preferences of Germans and therefore provides very detailed information on the socio-economic
profile and the economic attitudes of the more than 2.000 respondents participating in it. Another
advantage is that all respondents can be located in their postcode area, allowing us to measure our
contextual-level variables at this fine-grained level. Being designed as a panel survey, AFD-
support in May 2016 can also be regressed on all independent variables measured in May 2015,
when the first wave was fielded. Compared with cross-sectional data, this allows a much better
interpretation of any results in terms of causality. A slight disadvantage of our data is that some
well-known drivers of support for Extreme Right Parties are missing, e.g. critique of the EU and
religiosity. Also, with regard to policy-preferences concerning immigration, we have to rely on
support for the idea of political asylum and welfare chauvinism, as we lack more detailed
information on preferences with regard to immigration and integration policies. However, as the
18
survey provides the most up-to-date representative sample to analyze AFD support, the benefits
clearly outweigh these restrictions.
Starting with the dependent variable, AFD support, we use an item asking respondents
how likely it is that they will ever vote for this party. Respondents could indicate their support on
a scale from 0 (not likely at all) to 10 (very likely) and also had the chance to indicate that they
have never heard of this party before (only 2.5% of the sample chose this option for the AfD
whereas 21.7 % did not know ALFA, the splinter party founded by Bernd Lucke). For the
additional analyses in which we compare AFD supporters to those of the National Democratic
Party of Germany, we measured NPD support using the same approach.
With regard to the variables tapping the socio-economic profile of respondents, we
include gender, age (as well as age-squared), as well as formal education (low [Hauptschule,
Volksschule or no degree], medium [Realschule] and high [Fach-Abitur and higher]). Concerning
occupation, we test for the assumption that AFD supporters can mainly be found among blue-
collar workers and the self-employed. The financial situation of respondents is measured by their
personal income, in twelve categories. Other financially relevant variables have been recoded as
dummy variables, tapping if the respondent currently receives one of three welfare benefits
(unemployment benefits, social security or pensions), or if he or she fears at least to some extent
becoming unemployed, unfit to work, unable to pay for bare necessities or living off disability
benefits in the next twelve months. Finally, we control for if the respondent was born abroad,
spend his adolescent years in the former GDR or in Eastern Germany after reunification
(respondents were asked where they spend their schooling period between the ages of 12 and 16);
being born and socialized in Western Germany serves as the reference category.
Turning to political attitudes regarding immigration, we rely on a question asking if the
respondent sees the right of political asylum offered to foreigners in Germany to be “good”, “not
19
good”, or if he has no opinion on this issue (that is a standard item used in the 1992
Politbarometer). We focus on the “not good” answers (18.42%) and construct a dummy variable
against political asylum. While this is arguably a very restrictive measure of immigration-related
sentiments, to the time of the survey questions of asylum were of very high salience because of
the unprecedented inflow of asylum seekers between June 2015 and March 2016 (694,000
asylum applications). As an additional measure of immigration-related attitudes, we construct a
variable tapping welfare chauvinism. For this, respondent could indicate when they want to see
immigrants being entitled to the same welfare rights than the native population (“immediately on
arrival”, “after one year of residence”, “after one year of working and paying taxes”, “after
becoming German citizens”, or “never”). We construct two dummies for the last two categories
(together: 35 % of all respondents) and use all other answers as the baseline category. General
welfare support is tapped by an additional item, asking respondents to express their preferences
with regard to economic redistribution on a 11-point scale ranging from 0 (“cut taxes and reduce
social spending”) to 10 (“increase spending even if this means higher taxes”).6 Finally, we
include the vote share of the Republikaner – a traditional party of the Extreme Right – in the
1994 federal election (Bundeswahlleiter 2016), to account for the long-term regional political
context.7
We measure the level of political dissatisfaction by two variables asking respondents for
their degree of trust in the media and the national government. We have recoded the initially four
answer categories into dummy variables, which take the value of 1 if respondents indicate to have
6 We decided not to include respondents’ left-right self-placements to our list of political attitudes. This variable is
highly related to AFD support, but we see it to hide more that it tells, especially so with regard to the analysis of
PRRP supporters. While we agree with findings pointing to a two-dimensional political space in Germany, we prefer
to account for this by including the more telling items welfare support (economic) and political asylum (cultural
dimension) instead of left-right self-placements.
7 The variable is broken down to the level of postal code areas. We choose the 1994 election because todays’ postal
code areas were first introduced in the early 1990s.
20
absolutely no trust in these institutions. Ending our list of individual level variables, we tap
group-boundaries by items asking for how much the respondents trust three groups of people:
Germans without migration background, immigrants from outside Europe, and immigrants from
Eastern Europe. Answers were recoded into dummies so that higher values indicate that
respondents show no trust for these groups.
For the economic and political context, four variables enter the equation. Central for
group conflict explanations are the inflow of asylum seekers during the last month and the last
year, measured by absolute numbers for each 1.000 inhabitants. These two variables were
provided by the statistical offices of the Bundesländer (Quelle) and measure these short- and
long-term factors on this level.
To account for the economic context, we include the unemployment rate (in percent of the
working-age population) and a purchase power index brought in relation to the overall German
mean (=100). Both variables were provided by a commercial data provider and were measured on
the level of postal code areas.
The regression analysis consists of OLS regression with robust standard errors to correct
for heteroscedasticity. The data is basically a 2016 cross-section with some variables being
measured 12 months ago in some model set-tups. Robustness checks have been conducted to
show that lagged independent variables lead to the same conclusions.
5. Empirical Results
We provide our empirical results in two steps, first presenting models for AFD support in 2016
and then presenting three additional analyses (a regression of AFD support in 2016 on the
21
individual variables measured in 2015, a comparison of AFD and NPD supporters, and a
comparison of AFD supporters in Western and Eastern Germany).
Introducing the dependent variables and multiple regression results
Figure 1: Propensities ot vote for the AfD and the NPD
Figure 1 shows the distributions of propensities to vote for the AfD and the NPD. As we
can see, slightly more than 60 percent would never vote for the AfD, a proportion that stands at
more than 80 % for the NPD. This is in a way a negative kind of party identification. The NPD
and AfD are loathed so much that voters fully turn away from them. About 18 % of the
proposities to vote for the AfD lie to the right of the mid-point 5.
The first step of analysis is reported in the first models of Table 1. We start by focusing
on the impact of the socioeconomic context on AFD support (model 1) with individual-level
020 40 60 80
Percent
0 2 4 6 8 10
Party utiles AfD
020 40 60 80
Percent
0246810
Party utiles NPD
22
controls for gender, education, personal income and age/age² (Model 1). Let us briefly discuss the
control variables. There is a clear gender effect that will remain relatively stable throughout all
models with women being estimated to show lower support for the AfD. Higher educated people
(Abitur and higher) are estimated to have a lower propensity to vote for the AfD. Income and age
do not matter, which means that AfD support cross-cuts income and age levels in this first model.
The context matters, but not very strongly. Long-term immigration, measured by the number of
asylum seekers during the last year, is positively related to AFD support. Moreover, the AFD is
slightly less successful in wealthier regions (although the test on the coefficient is only significant
at .10 level). We also tested for several interaction effects between economic conditions and the
number of asylum seekers but none of these is even close to significance (not shown).
In model 2, we add all further variables addressing the socioeconomic profile of
respondents. First and foremost, political socialization plays a role for AFD support. Compared
with the reference category of people born in Western Germany, people raised in the former
GDR are more open to this party, an effect that diminishes for people being socialized in Eastern
Germany after reunification. More important – and being an effect very resistant to the inclusion
of additional variables – people born abroad are far more likely to show AFD support.
Immigrants supporting a party known for its anti-immigrant program might first seem
counterintuitive and we have no information on the respondents’ country of origin in our data.
However, people being born abroad and now living in Germany have a very high chance of
stemming either from Turkey (former guest workers and their descendants) or from Russia and
some former states of the Soviet Union. The latter group nearly exclusively entered Germany as
so-called “late re-settlers” in the early 1990s, being granted German citizenship immediately after
their arrival because of their German descent. While data on the voting behavior of immigrants in
Germany is not very detailed, we strongly expect that AFD support is strongest among the group
23
of late re-settlers, as the AFD is strongly advertising among this voter group for instance with a
Russian election manifest.
Beside these gender and socialization effects, it is hard to come up with a unified picture
of AFD support resulting from socio-economic variables. Occupation does not matter as it is
measured here. Neither does occupation play a role. Also, education slightly fails significance,
but AFD support seems to be more concentrated among respondents with low and medium but
without university education. Regarding the financial situation of AFD supporters, the findings
are mixed. On the one hand, high personal income increases support for AFD (different from
Model 1) and neither unemployed nor respondent receiving social assistance show stronger
support for the party. AfD support is not more common among those dependent on the welfare
state. On the other hand, AFD sympathizers report stronger fears of future economic decline (the
they see the risk of becoming unemployed or not being able to pay for the expenses of everyday
life). In sum, this speaks for economic variables playing a role for AFD support, but sympathizers
seem to be motivated much more by fears of social relegation than by their low objective social
status. Note also, that already the inclusion of socioeconomic variables turns any effect of
contextual variables far away from significance and increases the R2 to 4.8 percent. This means
that all contextual effects are fully mediated by the individual-level variables now in the model.
For instance, the effect of contextual affluence is mediated by the perception of the risk of
material downfall. Once we know whether individual are afraid of that, the contextual level loses
importance.
Before we move to attitudinal variables, we include another contextual variable in model
3 that is the long shadow of right-wing voting in Germany. We introduce the electoral district
result of the Republikaner form the 1994 Bundestag election. Now something really surprising
happens: the existing variables get clearer coefficients, and the Republikaner effect is strongly
24
significant. This means that knowing the historical context of right-wing voting of the voter on
top of the affluence indicators of purchase power and unemployment rate increases our
understanding the propensity to vote for the AfD 22 years after the Republikaner. There seem to
be some contexts in Germany in which right-wing voting is more common and probably more
socially acceptable than in other contexts. This effect is not mediated by the individual-level
variables, meaning that it exist on top of them. The R² has increased to 6.0 percent.
In model 4, we now introduce a variety of variables about political ideology, political
attitudes and social attitudes. As we will lay out, they include very strong effects of the
propensity to vote for the AfD, boosting the R² to 26.6 percent. However, with right-wing voting,
it may be somewhat more interesting to look for changes in effects of variables that are causally
more distant from the dependent varaibles, too. But first, let us look at the direct and in a way not
very surprising results. Voters who believe that the right to political asylum is a bad idea,
immigrants should never get the same welfare rights as the majority population or only once they
have become German citizens, are much more likely to vote for the AfD. On top of that, those
who believe that the welfare state should be expanded in the future even if that means more taxes
are less likely to support the AfD. This variable can be seen like a kind of socio-economic left-
right variable. Its effect demonstrates that the AfD still has a strong economically conservative
base next to its culturally conservative base. Note that this effect does not only survive all other
controls but also equals the strength of both the rejection of political asylum and welfare
chauvinism. Thus, and in contrast to many other PRRPs in Western Europe (Ivarsflaten 2005),
the AFD is not faced with a political support base divided over the issue of economic
redistribution. Rather, its sympathizers can be classified as being both economic and culturally
right-wing.
25
Finally, and coming to political dissatisfaction and group boundaries, the findings are in
line with the theoretical expectations. AFD supporters are far more critical of the governing grand
coalition between CDU/CSU and SPD, led by Angela Merkel. Also, they tend to distrust
immigrants more, but only those stemming from outside Europe, not those from Eastern Europe.
In contrast, and supporting the theoretical expectations of group identity theory, AFD supporters
show a higher tendency to trust people of German ethnicity. Increasing the R2 from 5 to 27
percent, the final model explains the support for the AFD quite well. In sum, cultural and
economically right-wing political attitudes, political dissatisfaction, fears of immigration and
personal economic decline, as well as gender and socialization effects make up the list of the
most relevant explanatory variables.
Often, cross-sectional analyses of voting intentions meet both theoretical and
methodically motivated criticism for “explaining attitudes with attitudes”. To address this point,
we can make use of the panel character of our survey, regressing the political support for the
AFD in 2016 on the individual level variables measured in May 2015 – that is before the German
refuge crisis started in July 2015. By this, we can both rule out effects of media framing and also
the possibility that AFD support results in more right-wing political attitudes rather than being
caused by them. As the first additional analysis, we present the results of this specification in
model 4b. These are now just people who were in both panel waves (about 1300 respondents).
The basic story is the same (see model 4b). The political and social attitudes measured one year
before have the same effect on AfD support in 2016 as if measured cross-sectionally. This means
that the AfD builds on already existing attitudes. This does not mean that it does not change them
as well, but they piggy-back their support on long-term and rather stable individual attitudes
around cultural and economic conservatism as well as others.
26
Table 1: OLS regression on the propensities to vote for AfD (m1 to m4b) and NPD (m5)
M1 M2 M3 M4a M4b M5
Context
asylum applctns last mnth by 1000 inhabitants 0.109 0.065 0.056 -0.012 0.167 -0.371
(0.792) (0.876) (0.893) (0.976) (0.689) (0.086)
asylum applctns last yr by 1000 inhabitants 0.083* 0.055 0.020 0.007 0.017 0.043
(0.043) (0.194) (0.645) (0.854) (0.677) (0.060)
unemployment rate in % in pstcde -0.021 -0.038 -0.008 -0.004 -0.003 0.005
(0.407) (0.144) (0.773) (0.844) (0.917) (0.734)
purchase power index 2016 in pstcde, all of DE = 100 -0.010 -0.009 -0.011 -0.008 -0.010 -0.007*
(0.086) (0.134) (0.066) (0.143) (0.101) (0.020)
% of prty-lst votes Republikaner in 1994 in district, mean-
imptd 0.490* 0.323* 0.330* 0.114*
(0.000) (0.000) (0.003) (0.027)
Controls
female -0.486* -0.456* -0.450* -0.416* -0.590* 0.073
(0.003) (0.005) (0.005) (0.004) (0.001) (0.379)
bl: education (low), education (medium) 0.286 0.247 0.270 0.410 0.178 -0.017
(0.233) (0.313) (0.266) (0.062) (0.523) (0.902)
education (high) -0.490* -0.440 -0.346 0.049 0.017 -0.257
(0.040) (0.075) (0.160) (0.823) (0.951) (0.051)
personal income in 2016, median-imptd 0.035 0.089* 0.082 0.055 0.099* 0.060*
(0.419) (0.040) (0.059) (0.156) (0.047) (0.014)
Age 0.023 -0.004 -0.005 -0.043 -0.032 -0.073*
(0.484) (0.915) (0.899) (0.152) (0.434) (0.000)
Age² -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 0.000 0.000 0.001*
(0.302) (0.858) (0.866) (0.308) (0.677) (0.010)
Theoretically derived variables
Socialisation
bl: adolescence in West DE, abroad 1.090* 1.176* 0.812 1.332* 0.116
(0.025) (0.015) (0.070) (0.033) (0.570)
adolescence in East Germany after 1990 0.366 0.560* 0.212 -0.145 -0.205
(0.174) (0.038) (0.374) (0.613) (0.130)
adolescence in GDR 0.497 0.728* 0.432 0.417 0.056
(0.076) (0.010) (0.100) (0.167) (0.715)
Occupation
bl occupation other: self-emplyed -0.156 -0.146 -0.123 0.162 -0.126
(0.650) (0.666) (0.682) (0.687) (0.437)
blue collar -0.144 -0.131 -0.358 -0.805 0.305
(0.698) (0.727) (0.329) (0.079) (0.189)
Receiving groups WS
receives soc assistance 0.266 0.372 0.095 0.460 0.166
(0.527) (0.375) (0.799) (0.361) (0.482)
27
receives unempl benefits -0.221 -0.180 0.132 0.243 0.452
(0.746) (0.784) (0.852) (0.826) (0.420)
receives pension -0.017 0.055 -0.063 0.063 0.038
(0.953) (0.846) (0.791) (0.828) (0.778)
Personal material risks
at lst some prsnl risk: falling unemplyed 0.427 0.419 0.402 0.266 0.470*
(0.096) (0.099) (0.087) (0.364) (0.003)
at lst some prsnl risk: being unfit for work 0.150 0.190 0.141 -0.061 0.286*
(0.537) (0.430) (0.525) (0.823) (0.050)
at lst some prsnl risk: being unable to pay for bare
necessities 0.776* 0.752* 0.174
0.352 0.125
(0.000) (0.000) (0.369) (0.132) (0.270)
at lst some prsnl risk: living off disability bnfts 0.408 0.384 0.578* 0.790* 0.475*
(0.135) (0.157) (0.018) (0.012) (0.005)
Political attitudes
right for political asylum not good idea 1.631* 1.365* 0.827*
(0.000)
(0.000) (0.000)
Welfare chauvinism
BL: all other attributions, immigrant never the same rights 1.570* 1.365* 0.582*
(0.000)
(0.000) (0.002)
immigrants the same rights when DE citizens 0.677* 0.505* -0.032
(0.000)
(0.015) (0.708)
Economic left-right: bipolar attitude btw cut taxes+reduce
spending and increase taxes+increase spend -0.115*
-0.148* -0.033
(0.000)
(0.000) (0.063)
no trust in the media 0.177 0.011 -0.069
(0.298)
(0.956) (0.452)
no trust in the federal govt 1.081* 0.514* 0.032
(0.000)
(0.014) (0.710)
no trust: Germans -1.013* -2.168* -0.024
(0.009)
(0.000) (0.918)
no trust: migrants from outside Europe 1.368* 1.781* 0.413*
(0.000)
(0.000) (0.005)
no trust: migrants from Eastern Europe -0.138 0.543* -0.201
(0.502)
(0.034) (0.076)
Constant 3.289* 3.354* 2.567* 2.901* 3.301* 2.863*
(0.004) (0.004) (0.028) (0.004) (0.015) (0.000)
N 1932.000 1931.000 1931.000 1931.000 1303.000 1936.000
AIC 10183.568 10151.587 10129.612 9670.054 6585.921 7639.666
R² 0.022 0.048 0.060 0.266 0.256 0.166
* p < 0.05, p-values of a two-sided test that beta=0 also in parentheses, cell entries are unstandardized OLS estimates, robust standard error. Estimates in bold in m4b are from
2015.
28
Comparing the electoral base of AfD and NPD support
As a second additional analysis, we can also compare the support base of the AFD with this of
the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). As discussed in the theoretical section, AFD
supporters are often equated with supporters of this traditional, openly racist, anti-democratic (but
far less successful) party of the Extreme Right. What do our data reveal for these tenets? Is AFD
support motivated by the same set of socioeconomic, attitudinal and contextual variables than
support for the NPD? For this, we have calculated the same model as for AFD support (model 4,
Table 1) but with NPD support as the dependent variable and report the results in model 5.
Starting again with contextual effects, like the AFD, also the NPD tends to gain stronger support
in less well-off regions and more clearly in regions that received a lot of asylum-seekers
(although the estimate for the effects of the last month are counter-intuitive). Regarding the
socioeconomic profile of the two supporter groups, NPD supporters are much more clearly
defined by their age structure (both very young and old voters) and their low formal education
than voters of the AFD. Also, the NPD lacks the support of voters born abroad and is not
significantly more the favourite among men than women. While occupational status and objective
economic situation do a poor job in explaining support for both parties, perceptions of risks of
unemployment and disability to work are widespread among both groups. Regarding policy
preferences, both groups are unsurprisingly very critical of the right of political asylum and of
granting welfare rights to immigrants. Differences between both parties’ supporters appear in
their economic preferences, AFD supporters being much more market-liberal than those of the
NPD. Regarding the lower socio-economic profile of the latter, this comes at little surprise but
surely makes this policy dimension less conflictual for the new competitor. Finally, the self-
reported level of political dissatisfaction of AFD supporters is significantly higher than those of
NPD sympathizers – both regarding distrust in media but especially regarding the federal
29
government. Given that the NPD is considered to be an anti-system party, this is a noteworthy
finding.
6. Conclusions
Using a recent representative survey, we provide the first analysis of the supporter base of the
AFD since the parties’ split and ideological reorientation in mid-2015. Deriving our hypotheses
on AFD sympathizers from the comparative literature of PRRPs in Western Europe, our
empirical findings strongly indicate that the electoral success of Germany newest right-wing
party is due to the same set of socio-economic, attitudinal and contextual factors proven so
important to explain the fortunes of PRRPs in other countries. In sum, right-wing political
attitudes concerning immigration, political dissatisfaction, fears of personal economic decline, as
well as gender and socialization effects make up the list of the most relevant explanatory
variables. Because of this, there is little support for recent interpretations, restricting the rise of
the AFD as a result of political protest against mainstream parties alone. Rather, our analyses
strongly suggest that the party has already managed to form a coherent supporter base motivated
by both cultural as economically right-wing policy preferences and also is supported by parts of
Germans immigrant population itself. Compared with other Western European PRRPs, both
characteristics are rather unusual and we end our discussion by pointing to their potential mid- to
long-term impact on the electoral fortunes of the party.
Starting with the economic preferences of AFD sympathizers, these are not only
pronounced welfare chauvinists, but also highly critical of redistribution via welfare and taxation
in general. Thus, the party seems not be plagued by an internally divided electorate with regard to
general redistribution. While such divisions seem to be an open flank of many PRRPs –
30
especially when these parties enter government – the supporters of the AFD are much more
motivated by economic concerns than one might expect from an PRRP. Given that the AFD
started with a very market-liberal program and high-rank personal only four years ago, the role of
economic motivations for their supporters might come at little surprise. However, since 2013 the
party has more than doubled its electoral basis and the main proponents of its market-liberal
agenda has left the AFD after severe internal disputes over the issue of immigration. To find that
AFD supporters in 2016 are still motivated by right-wing economic preferences therefore is a
noteworthy finding, especially so as their impact equals this of immigration-related preferences
and survives the inclusion of any control variables. Regarding the long-term perspective of the
party, this might become a major electoral advantage as the AFD is currently not only the only
discussable option for anti-immigrant voters, but also the German party system is currently
lacking a pronounced market-liberal party.8 Combining cultural and economically right-wing
issues, the AFD might thus be able to occupy a whole quadrant in Germanys two-dimensional
political space for its own.
Finally, and concerning the support of people born abroad for the AFD, we are not aware
of a similar pattern for any other of Western Europe’s PRRPs. We strongly believe that this
support stems from Germany’s second largest immigrant group, i.e. people from Russia entering
the country during the early 1990s and immediately being granted with active and passive voting
rights because of their German descent. So far, these “late re-settlers” did show extraordinary
high support for the Christian Democrats but were not directly addressed by this party in electoral
campaigns. Recently, the AFD has spent considerable effort in directly addressing this voter
group, promising to improve Germany’s relationships towards Russia currently under
8 The Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP), was not able to pass the five percent threshold in the 2013
elections, resulting in its absence from the federal parliament for the first time since 1949. Current surveys see the
FDP around five percent for the 2017 elections, so it is unsure if the party will return to federal politics.
31
considerable stress due to the conflicts in the Ukraine and Syria. If the AFD succeeds in these
efforts – and our data reveals that it is on a good way to do so – it might be able to align this
group of nearly 2.5 million voters by referring to their ethnic identity. Together with
immigration-critical and market-liberal native voters, such an electoral alliance might not only
turn out highly successful but also very long-lived.
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