Debate: Why people vote for the AfD
The AfD is the strongest opposition party. There are hardly any sensible ways to reduce the AfD's appeal. A guest article.
Once upon a time, a politician promised to halve the AfD's election results . That politician is now Chancellor; and the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag is now almost twice as large as it was then. So what went wrong? Nothing special; our new Chancellor simply did what all his colleagues do when you put a microphone under their noses and ask them how to fight the AfD. Practically everyone then replies that you should do what best suits their political agenda—and the AfD will become weaker, halved, or even disappear altogether.
Leftists demand more left-wing policies, Greens demand more green policies, conservatives demand more conservative policies – then the AfD will shrink. Sometimes debates ensue about whether the AfD is better combated by allowing it to participate in government or have a say, or by further isolating it, whether to accommodate its platform or distance oneself from it. Merz chose the first path during the election campaign, thus making the CDU the largest parliamentary group in the Bundestag and the AfD the largest opposition group. This is what a Pyrrhic victory looks like these days. The AfD can then sit back and wait until the situation reverses and it becomes the largest parliamentary group in the Bundestag. It already does this in some state parliaments.
The debate about a remedy, however, is primarily flawed by the fact that in the public discussion about the AfD, the reasons for its strong support are confused with the justifications the AfD itself provides for it. This quickly becomes apparent when you put the AfD under the scientific microscope, which is relatively immune to any political agenda. The AfD has two main issues on which its politicians have something to say: migration and crime, which it also constantly confuses. And because it does this and is gaining more support, many (including our Chancellor) conclude that it is so strong because it constantly rails against foreigners and crime.
Yet that's just the justification AfD politicians give for their agenda and their voters for their voting decisions. It's not the reason. It's even simpler to argue that the "consequences of unification in the East" or "the exclusion of East Germans" are driving voters to the AfD. If that were the case, it wouldn't have been founded in 2013 (and not because of the euro bailout and aid to Greece), but in 1990, and the many young voters who support it today would have to stop because they are too young to have consciously experienced the time of reunification. The fact that East Germans vote for the AfD because they are disadvantaged is not a reason, but an explanation: Never before have the economic, financial, and material differences between East and West been as small as they are today. If that were the deciding factor in voting for the AfD, it would have to steadily weaken. The opposite is true. The argument based on the alleged discrimination against East Germans leads to the absurd conclusion that the AfD will break the 50 percent threshold in state parliaments if there are no longer any differences between East and West. This sounds counterintuitive, and it is, but a lot of people are currently following this logic.
So what are the real reasons for the AfD’s success?
Entrenched values, depopulation and perceived disadvantageJournalists usually investigate such matters by simply asking AfD politicians and their supporters – then they get explanations, but not the reasons. Instead, political scientists and social scientists look at where the AfD has its strongholds and what distinguishes them from other regions. The argument that the AfD is successful in East Germany because the people there were socialized in the GDR is then immediately dismissed.
In Hesse, the AfD received over 18 percent in the 2023 state elections, but the state was never part of the GDR. GDR socialization therefore only explains the difference between support in the West (which fluctuates between 4.4 percent in Schleswig-Holstein and 14.6 percent in Bavaria) and that in the East (between 20 percent in Saxony-Anhalt and 32 percent in Thuringia), but not why people vote for the party at all. This latter difference also shows that the GDR past is not the only factor in the East; otherwise, there wouldn't be such large regional differences.
A study by Marc Debus (Professor at the University of Mannheim), Christian Stecker (Professor at the TU Darmstadt) and Julius Kölzer of the TU Darmstadt sheds light on the matter. According to this study, the AfD was able to mobilise right-wing extremist voter potential more easily and achieved significantly better election results in the 2024 elections in regions where other right-wing radical parties had already received significant support in 2009.
This connection also works in the West, but is significantly stronger in the East. One can go back even further and find that the AfD is particularly strong in Thuringia, Brandenburg, and Saxony, where the NSDAP was during the Weimar Republic. This is no reason to label all AfD voters as Nazis, because those who voted for the NSDAP back then are mostly long dead today. And some AfD voters are so young that they weren't even eligible to vote when the DVU or the Republicans were campaigning. However, the whole thing suggests that in some (but not all) regions, certain values have been passed down from generation to generation that are more in line with the AfD's values than what parents, schools, and schoolmates in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, or Saarland (where the AfD has low results) passed on.
Many types of fearSocial scientists can also examine the characteristics of AfD voters and sympathizers to uncover reasons for the AfD's success that the respondents themselves aren't necessarily aware of. For example, the feeling of being disadvantaged increases the likelihood of voting for the AfD much more than the fact of actually being disadvantaged. This also applies to unemployment – studies from the 1990s (when unemployment was still high) show that the unemployed are no more likely to vote for right-wing radicals than workers. People who fear unemployment, on the other hand, are much more likely to support right-wing radicals than those who have already lost their jobs or who don't see their jobs threatened. The same applies to other types of fear: whether justified or not – those who are more afraid of social decline are more likely to vote for the AfD than those who are threatened with social decline but aren't afraid of it. This is the result of a study by Professor Sachweh from the University of Bremen. This is nothing new for social scientists. Such studies have been conducted in many European countries ever since right-wing populist and right-wing radical parties came into being, i.e., since roughly the 1980s. They explain why entire villages in Alsace voted for the Front National at that time, even though there were neither crimes nor foreigners in their communities.
What's particularly astonishing is how stubbornly they are ignored by the public, the media, and the AfD's political opponents. For months, many of these studies have even been accessible via political scientist Julius Kölzer's Blue Sky and X accounts , without triggering any significant reaction from politicians.
Fewer crimes, more fear of themThis resistance to science is also evident in the most controversial topic area—xenophobia, migration, and crime. Here, too, the perception of migration and perceived crime are more important for voting decisions than the actual trends in immigration and crime.
My Bulgarian colleague Ivan Krastev has put forward the bold—and somewhat overly simplistic—thesis that part of the support for right-wing populists stems from the fear of depopulation . That sounds a bit like the theories of some right-wing radicals who viewed Angela Merkel's refugee policy as an attempt to "repopulate" Germany. That's what happens when you confuse the reason with the reason. Many people do indeed fear this, but the reason isn't that there are too many foreigners or strangers around them, but rather too few. It sounds absurd, but it isn't.
Julius Kölzer also published a study which concludes that strong migration from rural areas boosts the AfD's results in state elections. But be careful: People there don't vote for the AfD because there are too many foreigners in their village, but because there are fewer and fewer people in general. I personally know such areas in several European countries: the young move to the city, the old stay behind, the only pub closes, then the grocery store, the doctor is in the district town. In Poland, a mobile shop with basic groceries and a private bus service come at least once a week; in East Germany, there is sometimes not even that. There are people who vote for the AfD in Germany, the PIS in Poland, or Marine Le Pen's party in France, even though there has never been a foreigner in their village and no crime has been recorded there for ten years. But when a reporter puts a microphone under their noses and asks them about politics, they reply that they don't trust those in power, that they're afraid of the future, of migrants, and of being attacked. How can that be?
More or less immigration – no matterA study by a group of scientists led by Marcel Helbig sheds light on the matter. Helbig systematically examined how the arrival of 800,000 refugees from the Balkan route in 2015 affected attitudes towards foreigners in various cities. His findings should make everyone stop and take notice, but especially our politicians, with the Chancellor at the forefront. In cities with a high immigrant presence, xenophobia measured in surveys fell, while it rose in cities that experienced little or no immigration at the time. Helbig's research explains the paradox that the AfD is strong wherever there are few foreigners and where few refugees were sent in 2015, but weak in places (for example, in North Rhine-Westphalia) where many refugees were sent at that time or where many immigrants have always lived (such as in Hamburg or Frankfurt). There are two fundamentally opposing theories about the origins of xenophobia, let's call them the distance hypothesis and the contact hypothesis. The first claims that people like strangers as long as they stay at home and don't approach them, thus maintaining their distance. They like tourists, but not immigrants. The second claims that people stop being afraid of strangers when they recognize them as fellow human beings, thus having closer contact with them. Helbig's work is a clear confirmation of the contact hypothesis. Anyone can try it out for themselves: What am I more afraid of, anonymous masses of people I don't know (football fans, protesters, immigrants I see on TV) or people I meet in everyday life (downstairs at the Italian, Turkish, or Greek restaurant, or at the sports club and at work)? The media plays a crucial role in (often unintentionally) fueling xenophobia. They often talk about "floods of migrants" and "waves of immigration" and show or describe faceless masses that have "set out on their journey." The point isn't so much that such images equate people with natural disasters, but rather that they make the individual disappear behind an anonymous mass. This then has a direct impact on the integration of immigrants, especially in small communities where many immigrants are distributed. Protests then immediately arise, even before the immigrants arrive, and the media then reports on these protests (thus amplifying them beyond the community in question).
Once the immigrants arrive, the climate changes: The locals no longer see an anonymous, threatening crowd, but rather individuals, some of whom need (and often receive) help. But by then, the media have already left. This mechanism also explains why there are no protests in countries like Uganda or Rwanda, which, relative to their population, take in more refugees than most European countries. In South Africa, on the other hand, there are repeated protests and even riots against immigrants – but there is also a free and very pluralistic press there. Authoritarian rulers keep the issue out of the media. This is obviously no recipe for Germany; you can't introduce censorship to prevent protests against immigration. So, another point where no government can score points against the AfD – the very fact that we have a free and pluralistic press (which AfD supporters like to call the lying press) contributes enormously to the AfD's success.
A debate that goes in a completely wrong directionThis leads to two conclusions that contradict pretty much everything currently being publicly discussed on the subject. First: Attracting AfD voters through increased xenophobia, a "radical shift in migration," and border closures is counterproductive. Not, or not only, because AfD voters prefer the original to the copy, and their party can always appear more radical in opposition than any party that wants to govern in a coalition. But primarily because it has consequences that drive even more voters to the AfD, because it further exacerbates public services in rural areas and depopulation due to labor shortages. "Umvolkung"—that is, replacing young people who are migrating with immigrants—would certainly be a solution for depopulated rural areas, but it would backfire elsewhere. In light of Helbig's research, this would indeed reduce xenophobia in the periphery, but since the media would naturally report on such experiments, it would lead to more xenophobia in other places where there are few or no immigrants.
But above all, this means one thing: no politician, no government, can stop the AfD's influx of votes in the short term. No one can allay that fear from people who, with an unemployment rate of just under six percent and a general labor shortage, fear becoming unemployed. No one is in a position to allay people's fear of being attacked and robbed as long as they aren't interested in crime statistics (which have been declining for years) but pay much more attention to spectacular individual cases. And no politician can convince people who feel left behind that they haven't been left behind at all. So if Friedrich Merz wants to steal votes from the AfD, it won't be by following in its footsteps and railing against immigrants and "little pashas," but by investing his special funds in rural areas and their connections, ensuring that at least Syrian, Iranian, or Ukrainian doctors are settled there and more streetlights are installed. The latter – as studies from the Netherlands 20 years ago showed – contributes more to reducing fear of crime than police patrols and harsher punishments.
But all of this – even if someone dared to do it – would only help in the medium term at best. In the short term, the media and public response would drive even more votes for the AfD. No government, no parliament, no constitutional court can implement such measures as quickly as Merz would have to reduce the AfD by half to benefit from it himself – at least not in a constitutional state. In a state governed by injustice, one could resettle the people of Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Brandenburg in regions with strong democratic traditions and mix them with citizens from areas without such entrenched authoritarian attitudes. One could resettle massive numbers of foreigners and keep the issue out of the media through censorship. The yearning for the all-powerful and extremely caring authoritarian state that many AfD voters long for could only be fulfilled by the Federal Republic itself becoming one. None of this is permitted or has any chance of garnering the necessary majorities.
The problem for all those currently calling for the AfD to be politically opposed instead of banned is twofold: First, they've had over ten years to do so and haven't succeeded. Second, even if one accuses them of not procrastination, cheap excuses, or helplessness, but rather of maximum goodwill, it's now clear: they simply can't. Drastically reducing AfD support among voters will only be possible if the Federal Republic ceases to be the Federal Republic and becomes what many AfD voters imagine their state to be: a mono-ethnic authoritarian state that cracks down hard on its opponents and those they themselves consider foreigners and criminals—while simultaneously showing caring leniency toward them, the AfD voters. Let's call it the populism paradox: The state can only keep the AfD in check if it becomes what the AfD wants. Then it will be superfluous, but it will also have achieved all of its goals – except for its share of power. That's not a good prospect for the other parties, nor a good prospect for us citizens. But there is a way out of this predicament: Don't reduce the demand for the AfD, but rather the supply. But that's a completely different issue – with completely different side effects.
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