At Opposite Poles: How the Success of the Green Party and AfD Reflects the Geographical and Social Cleavages in Germany

Christian Franz, Marcel Fratzscher and Alexander Kritikos

DIW Weekly Report, 2019, vol. 9, issue 34, 289-300

Abstract: German voters in the 2019 European election showed remarkable regional differences in their voting behavior. The Green Party surged in West German districts, while the AfD further consolidated its successes in East Germany. Investigating structural differences at the district level reveals that the Green party is particularly popular in economically strong, demographically young, and dynamic districts with solid economic structures. The AfD receives more support in economically weaker, vulnerable districts where demographics skew toward the older population because younger people have moved away. The strength of both the Green Party and the AfD is less due to current economic growth, but rather structural and demographic factors. Thus, the Green Party and the AfD reflect polarities not only in the political arena, but also in Germany’s new social divide at the district level.

Keywords: political parties; elections; Germany; economy; demography; structural data; European elections; Federal elections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.672923.de/dwr-19-34-1.pdf (application/pdf)

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:diw:diwdwr:dwr9-34-1

Access Statistics for this article

DIW Weekly Report is currently edited by Tomaso Duso, Marcel Fratzscher, Peter Haan, Claudia Kemfert, Alexander Kritikos, Alexander Kriwoluzky, Stefan Liebig, Lukas Menkhoff, Karsten Neuhoff, Carsten Schröder, Katharina Wrohlich and Sabine Fiedler

More articles in DIW Weekly Report from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek (bibliothek@diw.de).