Who Votes for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW)? A Policy-Space Perspective

Nils Steiner () and Sven Hillen ()
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Nils Steiner: Johannes-Gutenberg University, Germany
Sven Hillen: Johannes-Gutenberg University, Germany

No 2413, Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Abstract: This contribution studies voting intentions for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) from a policy-space perspective. What makes the new German party special is its unusual bundling of economically left-wing with culturally right-wing positions. We turn to survey data from March 2024 (GLES Tracking T57) to assess how this bundling is reflected in the positions of their supporters. Distinguishing between an economic policy dimension, a transnational dimension and a traditional morality dimension, we find that the probability of intending to vote for the BSW increases with more left-wing economic positions and with more nationalist positions. Conservative positions on traditional morality are not meaningfully associated with the overall probability of a BSW vote but make it more likely to support BSW rather than the Greens and less likely to support BSW relative to the AfD. We conclude that the policy-space perspective holds potential to understand the party’s early success, but that its voters are better characterized as ‘left-nationalists’ than ‘left-conservatives’.

Keywords: BSW; German politics, issue voting; policy space. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2024-08-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_2413.pdf First version, 2024 (application/pdf)

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