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The following text has been machine translated from the German with no human editing.
Why do people support the Alternative for Germany (AfD)? Is it those who feel left behind (or those who consider themselves to be so), or is it people with lower levels of education and below-average incomes? Until now, social upheaval in particular has been regarded as the key motive for people in Germany voting for the AfD. According to this so-called ‘losers of modernisation hypothesis’, certain sections of the population feel left behind by globalisation, social change or economic upheaval and therefore turn to parties such as the AfD.
A new academic study has reached a different conclusion: it is not social or economic disadvantage that appears to be the main reason for supporting the party, but rather, above all, concerns about immigration. The study by Martin Schröder, Professor of Sociology at Saarland University, together with Moritz Rehm and Anja Röcke from his research team, was published in the academic journal PLOS One. For their analysis, they evaluated data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), one of the largest and oldest population surveys in Germany. The study covers the period from 2014 to 2024 and is based on more than 110,000 individual interviews with just under 32,000 people.
According to the findings, concerns about immigration already account for around three-quarters of the statistically explainable differences in support for the AfD. When it comes to actual voting behaviour, this proportion rises to around 90 per cent. Additional information on income, educational attainment or subjectively perceived disadvantage only slightly alters the prediction of AfD support.
The researchers used a question that is regularly asked in the SOEP: ‘How concerned are people about immigration to Germany?’ Respondents could indicate whether they felt not at all concerned, somewhat concerned or very concerned. “This assessment proved to be the strongest single indicator of support for the AfD across the entire period studied. It is not about the actual number of migrants in a person’s immediate surroundings, but about their personal perception and assessment of the issue of immigration,” says Martin Schröder, explaining the background to this question.
Martin Schröder, Moritz Rehm and Anja Röcke examined numerous factors frequently associated with the rise of right-wing populist parties. These included: income, level of education, satisfaction with one’s own life, concerns about one’s personal financial situation, and concerns about general economic developments. In doing so, they observed a clear correlation: “Whilst some of these factors showed statistical correlations with support for the AfD, However, compared with concerns about immigration, these correlations were significantly weaker. Particularly noteworthy is that even people with high incomes and high levels of education were more likely to support the AfD if they expressed strong concerns about migration,” says Martin Schröder, explaining these correlations.
It is particularly revealing that the team monitored the same individuals over several years. This enabled them to investigate which changes in a person’s life lead them to support the AfD more strongly than before. Here, too, a clear pattern emerged: “When people became more concerned about immigration over time , their likelihood of supporting the AfD increased significantly. Changes in financial circumstances or fears of social decline, by contrast, had hardly any effect,” Martin Schröder elaborates on this point.
The findings are likely to reignite the debate on the causes of the AfD’s success. “Many political actors argue that an improvement in social and economic conditions could deprive right-wing populist parties of their breeding ground. Our analyses suggest that cultural and migration-related attitudes are considerably more important,” the team concludes with regard to political practice. For research, the findings of the study imply that explanatory models focusing primarily on social disadvantage fall short, as, in the authors’ view, concerns about immigration already explain support for the AfD so comprehensively that additional explanations provide only limited new insights.
Original publication:
Schröder M, Rehm M, Röcke A (2026) Supporters of Germany’s far-right AfD party are concerned about immigration rather than feeling deprived. PLoS One 21(7): e0350403. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0350403
Further information:
Prof. Dr. Martin Schröder
Email: martin.schroeder(at)uni-saarland.de
