Socio-Economic Factors of Citizens’ Voting Behavior in Germany

The article examines socio-economic factors determining citizens’ electoral behavior in Germany. Given the popularity of Minister President of Bavaria M. Soder, famous for supporting the idea of closing the external EU borders after the migrant crisis and for sustaining the lowest unemployment rate in his state, the author finds out how unemployment rate and percentage of migrants affect electoral behavior in German states both at Bundestag and Landtag elections during the last two electoral cycles (2011-2019). When economic conditions become worse, citizens are prone to “punish” parties in power and tend to choose “opposing” parties and an alternative candidate to the incumbent. However, when there is economic welfare in a state, citizens tend not to change electoral pattern and vote for the party or candidate in power. In order to carry out the research, the author codified German parties according to P. Norris and R. Inglehart’s classification. Regression analysis was used to find the significant variables in shaping electoral preferences and support for a particular party. The author found out that there is a significant coefficient of determination between unemployment rate and voting for liberal pluralist parties. Lands with low unemployment rate supported such parties. At the same time, there is high coefficient of determination between unemployment rate and support for authoritarian populist parties: the higher was the unemployment rate, the higher was support for these parties. Besides, there was a high coefficient of determination between the percentage of migrants and voting for liberal pluralist and authoritarian populist parties: lands that witnessed high migration voted for liberal pluralist parties, whereas support for authoritarian populists was low. Multivariate exploratory data analysis with the use of parallel coordinates plot helped to define clusters of German states with specific electoral patterns for each German land. The author concludes that high unemployment rate along with low percentage of migrants lead to high support for the right-populist party AfD, whereas low unemployment rate and high percentage of migrants prompt citizens to vote for “classical” parties, i.e. CDU/CSU and SPD. Finally, economic and political cleavage between the Western and the Eastern states still holds. This factor also has an impact on citizens’ electoral preferences in German lands. If the described electoral patterns are preserved, the citizens are more likely to vote for the “classical” parties and abstain from opposition voting in the upcoming electoral cycle.

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