Party Competition and Voter Attitudes in German Border Regions: Evidence From Local VAAs

Daniela Braun, Elisa Deiss-Helbig, Theresa Gessler, Jochen Müller, Julia Wagner and Georg Wenzelburger
Additional contact information
Daniela Braun: Department of European Social Research, Saarland University, Germany
Elisa Deiss-Helbig: Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Germany
Theresa Gessler: Department of Social Sciences, University of Hamburg, Germany
Jochen Müller: Department of Political Science and Communication Studies, University of Greifswald, Germany
Julia Wagner: Department of European Social Research, Saarland University, Germany
Georg Wenzelburger: Department of European Social Research, Saarland University, Germany

Politics and Governance, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: When studying questions of European democracy, research is still very much focused on national political actors. This can be partly explained by the fact that data on political parties’ positions toward Europe and citizens’ attitudes have been mainly collected at the national level, and because sample sizes at the regional or local levels are too small. However, political parties compete about issues related to Europe on different levels—and especially so in European border regions where the local level coincides even more strongly with the EU level. For the particular case of such inner-EU border regions, home to around one third of EU citizens, little is known about patterns of party competition and citizens’ specific demands and preferences. This study addresses this gap, using innovative data from the voting advice application VOTO, specifically designed for local elections held in Germany in 2024. Focusing on four German border regions—two on the Eastern and two on the Western border—it provides new insights into how European democracy works at the local level by examining political parties’ positions and citizens’ political preferences. In particular, the study investigates the extent to which border-specific features and party cues shape voters’ perspectives on cross-border cooperation and European integration. Our findings speak not only to insights from qualitative case studies, which tell us that citizens living in such border regions have specific preferences in terms of saliency and positions, but also to quantitative research studying Euroscepticism in European border regions.

Keywords: border regions; Europe; Germany; party competition; political attitudes; VAAs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/11228 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v14:y:2026:a:11228

DOI: 10.17645/pag.11228

Access Statistics for this article

Politics and Governance is currently edited by Carolina Correia

More articles in Politics and Governance from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().