A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Flesh of the Same Flesh: A Study of Voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 Federal Election




AuthorsMichael A. Hansen, Jonathan Olsen

Publication year2019

JournalGerman Politics

Volume28

Issue1

First page 1

Last page19

DOIhttps://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2018.1509312

Web address https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644008.2018.1509312


Abstract

Using the 2017 post-election German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), this article examines the voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 German federal election. We show that AfD voters in 2017 were truly ‘flesh of the same flesh’ of the mainstream German political parties, with the AfD drawing its voters from across the political party spectrum as well as from previous non-voters in 2013. In contrast to previous scholarship, we find that in most respects AfD voters in 2017 did not differ demographically from voters for all other parties, be that in terms of gender, education, employment status, and union membership. Furthermore, we find that AfD voters were not driven by anxiety about their own economic situation: they are no ‘losers of globalisation.’ Instead, AfD voters in 2017 were driven solely by two factors: their attitudes towards immigrants/refugees and anti-establishment sentiment/satisfaction with democracy in Germany.


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