20170369

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The Demand Side of the Electoral Success of Alternative for Germany

The Alternative for Germany was created in 2013 by ex-party members of the Christian

Democratic Union (CDU) and became the first far right national party to enter the Bundestag

since the Nazi party in World War II. Bernd Lucke, Alexander Gauland and other former party

members of the CDU were motivated to establish this radical right party because they were

frustrated with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to appease the Eurozone crisis by bailing

out Greece with German taxpayers’ money. Moreover, the CDU’s shift in various policies

towards the center ultimately led to the birth of the party with the aim of offering the “German

Alternative” to Merkel’s “there is no alternative” policies. (Kai, 2015) At first, the Afd did not

actually fit into Mudde’s (2007) definition of far-right parties across Europe. Despite attracting

few right-wingers as members, the Afd initially started with disappointed and frustrated

members of the German elites who were comprised of professors, lawyers, doctors, and former

center-right politicians who tried to avoid any association to traditional German radical right

parties. In fact, the origin of the Afd was Euroscepticism and neo-liberalist economy. However,

Merkel’s welcoming policy of the immigrants in 2015 gave a life line to the Afd as they were

able to salvage votes from angry German voters of the new immigration policy.

Up until 2013, right-wing parties faced challenges imposing themselves as a political

force. As a result, even after its establishment, the federal election of 2013 was a

disappointment as Afd failed to secure seats in the Bundestag with 4.7% vote percentage.

However, in the 2017 elections, the party’s efforts finally came to fruition as it managed to

secure 94 seats in the Bundestag by receiving 12.6% vote percentage. (Kai, 2015) This rapid
success of the Alternative for Germany can be explained through the investigation of voters’

policy preferences and socio-economic status. Hence, this essay will endeavor to explain the

rise of Alternative for Germany in terms of the demand side of the electoral support.

The frequent explanation used to explain the demand side of the Alternative for

Germany in 2017 federal elections is through the three main political attitudes of its voters:

policy preference for anti-immigration, economy, and protest motives. According to Van der

Brug et al. (2005), these policy preferences of the voters are much more significant to the

support for radical right parties than the socio-economic factors. Moreover, depending on the

social strata, voters may have combination of attitudes which can thus be used to explain the

stronghold support for the Afd amongst specific socio-economic group. (Kitschelt 2007)

In the 2017 federal elections, the majority of the voters voted for the Afd because of

their policy preferences towards anti-immigration policy. Myriad of scholars have previously

argued that the large proportion of radical right parties’ popularity stems from the xenophobic

attitudes of its voters (e.g., Golder 2003; Givens 2004; Norris 2005; Mudde 2007; Rydgren and

Ruth 2013; van der Waal et al. 2013). The difference between the support for the Afd in 2013

and 2017 federal elections is that in 2015, Merkel announced the welcoming policy toward

refugees of Muslim countries. (Modebadze 2019) The most consistent finding is that the

supporters of radical right parties tend to be extremely cynical towards immigrants from poorer,

different ethnicity and most importantly, Muslim countries. (Ceobanu et al. 2010; Rydgren

2008) This xenophobic attitude is motivated by cultural, economic, and safety factors.

Pertaining to cultural motivations, many supporters of the Afd fear the consequences of

integration of ethnically different refugees into their Christian culture. They believe that the

unique national culture may be lost through ethno-pluralism. (Betz et al. 2004) The second

motivation is the economic factor. Many men in the manual labor market in particular fear that
they may lose their jobs to the incoming refugees who can provide the same labor but at a much

cheaper price. Moreover, advocators for anti-immigration policy states that they feel unsafe

from the immigrants. In an interview conducted by the BBC, one of the voter’s reasons for the

support for Afd was because she was scared of people with headscarves and groups of young

men in the tram. (Hill 2017) This is mainly due to the fear of Islamization and terrorism of

stereotypical perspectives of immigrants from Muslim countries.

While the support for anti-immigration policy appears to have a unanimous agreement

amongst scholars, policy related to economy remains under question. Even though most

scholars seem to be dubious about the voters’ preference in economic policy of the radical right

parties, Kitschelt (1995) argued that the electoral success can largely depend on the prudence

to combine nationalism with laissez-faire economic policies. In addition, the concept of welfare

chauvinism maybe brought to life to explain the voters’ preference for Afd. Many voters of the

Afd are strongly against programs that is suspected to give disproportionate benefit to

immigrants. Therefore, it is only natural for xenophobic supporters to tend to lean towards the

radical right and support the Afd’s anti-immigration policy.

Whether it is the direct result of the radical right rhetoric or their personal beliefs, Afd

supporters are often critical of mainstream politicians and institutions as other radical right

supporters. (Van der Brug et al. 2003) According to Arzheimer (2008), the common thread of

the radical right supporters is that they are not necessarily driven by political motives but by

their emotions and dissatisfaction about the society in general. This is no different in Germany

as supporters of Afd casted votes to show their discontent. This is also known as the protest

motives which is to not vote for the party you support to show dissatisfaction with their policies

or other issues about the party. (Van de Brug et al. 2000) Regardless of what specific protest

motives they may have, this explains a unique aspect of the support for Afd.
 Another compelling explanation for the demand side of the electoral success of Afd is

the socio-economic status of its voters. In the individual level, previous studies indicate a

relationship between support for radical right parties and lower social strata, young and old age

groups, underrepresented middle-aged voters. With respect to the socio-economic status, most

of the socio-economic reasons for the support for Afd comes from the notion of missing out

from modernization. Voters with this frame of mind have usually low education level and are

in a situation of unemployment or threatened by unemployment. (Carter 2005; Rydgren 2004)

In addition, due to their poor education, they are working in low-skilled and low-paid jobs in

the manufacturing and manual labor sector which is very comparable to the immigrants who

came to the country in 2015. Therefore, these people at the lower social strata perceive the

immigrants as a threat to their job opportunity and economic well-being because the

immigrants are able to provide the same labor but at a cheaper price. Hence, it is only natural

for these people to vote for Afd to avoid competing with the immigrants over limited resources.

(Schheve et al. 2001)

Besides the aforementioned socio-economic variable, the gender vote discrepancy can

be observed for the support for Afd. Although there are no clear explanations as to why there

are more male supporters compared to female supporters, one plausible explanation is that the

competition for low-skilled manual labor may be the reason. Since lower social strata male are

much more likely to be working at a manufacturing and manual labor sector, they are exposed

to a brutal competition against the influx of immigrants who have integrated into the German

society. Furthermore, the results of the federal election in 2017 revealed that the support for

Afd usually came from the East Germany compared to West Germany. It is under debate

whether this can be attributed to the differences in social structures between the East and West

Germany or any context pertaining to economic or political.

 In conclusion, the electoral success of Alternative for Germany in the 2017 federal

elections can be explained by the demand side. The two main framework, policy preference

and socio-economic status, have contributed to the success of the Afd. However, it must be

noted that Merkel’s welcoming policy in 2015 have played a significant role in providing a

leverage for the Afd to exploit to cement themselves as the “German alternative”. Since the

party is relatively new, the research conducted on the party remain scarce. Nevertheless, the

federal election in September of 2021 will once again attest the support from the German

population.

Word Count: 1409

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