Berlin The latest polls by the AfD are causing unrest among economists and in business. “A shift to the right also causes economic damage and costs prosperity,” said Marcel Fratzscher, President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). A “further strengthening of right-wing extremist forces” means that Germany will become even less attractive for immigration.
Innovations also required diversity and an appreciation of diversity. “If this openness and tolerance continues to be lost, then German companies will be less and less able to keep up in global competition,” warned the DIW boss.
The Vice President of the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), Oliver Holtemöller, said: “If more people support demands that are directed against an open society, then that is also questionable from an economic perspective.” The surveys also showed that questions of social Security and social cohesion would obviously be neglected. In order to solve the major current problems such as demographics, decarbonization and digitization, it is important to actually take all sections of the population with you. “There seem to be deficits here at the moment.”
At the weekend, the CEO of the Essen-based chemical group Evonik, Christian Kullmann, spoke of a “very concrete threat to our liberal, tolerant democracy”. The general manager of the Mittelstandsverbund ZGV, Ludwig Veltmann, called the development “highly worrying”. “Of course, resentment about the federal government is also spreading among small and medium-sized companies – but this should never tempt us to join forces with populists who feed off this displeasure,” said Veltmann.
The latest polls are the cause of concern. According to Infratest Dimap, the right-wing party received 18 percent and would thus receive as many votes as the Social Democrats.
The parties accuse each other of doing too little against the rise of the right-wing party. CDU leader Friedrich Merz blames the Greens, who pursued climate policy with the “crowbar”. In addition, gender and “identitarian ideology” would provoke the protest. SPD politicians such as parliamentary group leader Dirk Wiese also cite the debate about the heating law as a reason, while the Green Party’s Irene Mihalic asked the coalition to act as one again, and FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai urged all parties to be self-critical.
Everything should remain as it never was
Are the parties able to “halve” the AfD, as CDU boss Merz had promised in 2021? The approval for the AfD does not break off, although the party has been listed as a suspected right-wing extremist for several years by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Is this the beginning of a period when democratic parties are marginalized? In order to find an answer to the question, it is helpful to look at who exactly votes for the AfD. The Sinus Institute in Mannheim is one of the leading milieu researchers in the state.
Robust, flexible, pragmatic and standing in the middle: This is how AfD voters see themselves. “The value pattern of typical AfD voters is characterized by a loss of trust, uncertainty, being overwhelmed, frustration and pessimism about the future, and conversely the desire for support and anchoring, combined with the longing for simple answers,” says Norbert Schäuble, shareholder of the Sinus Institute. The past is glorified with nostalgia.
Schäuble and his research team therefore place a quarter of AfD voters in the nostalgic, bourgeois milieu and 17 percent in the precarious milieu. It therefore affects the CDU and SPD equally.
But milieu researcher Schäuble has identified a new social development: The “adaptive-pragmatic middle” is also open to the AfD at 19 percent. The people there are willing to work, but also want to have fun, want to be anchored and belong, and are dissatisfied and insecure. “This milieu shapes the modern mainstream, and thus has a key function for social cohesion and the success of social transformation for future viability,” explains Schäuble. In Austria, this milieu has long been chosen by the right-wing conservative FPÖ.
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Like the political scientist Kai Arzheimer, professor at the University of Mainz, Schäuble registers that most AfD voters have medium to low rather than higher educational qualifications. They are critical of immigration, dissatisfied with the German democracy and have the feeling that they cannot express their own opinions freely. Approval is higher in the east, mainly because of the attitude towards immigration, and within eastern Germany there is a “north-south divide and probably also an urban-rural divide,” says Arzheimer.
AfD voters are mostly male (61 percent) and 45 years old or older (two thirds), as analyzes of the 2021 federal election showed. They are disappointed in the other parties (67 percent). According to ARD’s most recent “Deutschlandtrend”, only a third of them state that they vote for the AfD out of conviction.
That’s why Arzheimer doesn’t want to speak of the AfD flying high. The party is currently benefiting from a “very favorable environment”. These include “Ukraine, inflation, permanent government crisis”. That helps the party. “I would simply warn against counting changes that are just so outside of sampling error as big upswings.”
The litmus test awaits the parties in 2024
The Mainz party researcher does not believe that the other parties can win back the AfD voters completely. The AfD can rely on a “base of ideologically solid voters” who are not deterred by radicalization and who are difficult to win back, at least in the short and medium term. “These are the ten to 14 percent that the party has been able to hold nationwide since around 2017,” says Arzheimer. A third or more would not have voted at all beforehand.
Milieu researcher Schäuble supports this view. The number of citizens who vote for the AfD in protest varies depending on social developments. But if the problems increase, as Evonik boss Kullmann fears in view of the transformation of the economy, approval could increase. That is why both Schäuble and Arzheimer advise the other parties against adopting AfD positions and tightening immigration law, for example.
“What you could gain with it on the right, you lose many times over in the modern center of society,” analyzes Schäuble. “What really helps is solution-oriented, pragmatic politics that avoids uncertainty and fears about the future.” With this and with “appropriate communication, a significant part of the protest potential could be regained”.
The traffic light coalition, the Union and the left in the opposition do not have much time to sort themselves out and to convey a feeling of security despite the social upheavals. The focus is on the east: in 2024 people will be electing new state parliaments in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia.
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Extrapolated from the nationwide polls, “the AfD would get a good 25 percent of the votes in eastern Germany,” said Mathias Moehl, head of the statistics and forecasting platform election.de. He doesn’t think 30 percent is out of the question, which could make the AfD the strongest force in Saxony, for example.
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