Many losers – One winner? An examination of vote switching to the AfD in the 2017 German federal election using VAA data
Abstract
The German federal election of 2017 saw significant losses for the two German mainstream parties (Volksparteien) and governing coalition partners, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD). The major beneficiary was the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-populist party, which almost tripled its amount of votes received from the 2013 federal election. Making use of data from a Voting Advice Application, this article seeks to explore the AfD’s extraordinary electoral success with particular attention to the party’s capacity to attract voters from the two mainstream and traditionally powerful parties. Drawing on the literature on radical right-wing parties in Europe and tracking the route of AfD from a single-issue Eurosceptic party to a radical party with broader programmatic appeal, this work tests hypotheses regarding demographic, political and attitudinal determinants of voting for AfD, in general, and switching one’s vote to AfD from CDU/CSU or SPD more specifically. In line with previous literature, individual-level analyses show that voting for the AfD seems to be more tangentially related to demographic variables, such as sex, age and education and more strongly connected to political concerns, e.g. “conservative” self-placement and attitudes toward specific policies, immigration and Euroscepticism in particular.
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Biographies
L. Constantin Wurthmann is research associate at the Department of Social Sciences of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In his research, he works on electoral behaviour, the transformation of party systems and strategic political communication.
Stefan Marschall is full professor of political science and Chair of German Politics at the Department of Social Sciences of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. He has conducted and published research on the establishment of the Internet and its implications on political communication and institutions. For almost 20 years, Stefan has been conducting research on Voting Advice Applications.
Vasiliki Triga (PhD, European University Institute) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Internet Studies at the Cyprus University of Technology. Interests lie in the field of ICT/internet based political processes like Voting Advice Applications, Political Communication, Online Media and Participation. She is co-author of the book Referendums and the European Union: A Comparative Inquiry, Cambridge University Press 2014.
Vasilis Manavopoulos is research associate at the Department of Communication and Internet Studies at the Cyprus University of Technology.
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