A new study has rejected the notion that the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party only did well in homogenous-German neighborhoods, showing that the opposite was true and that the party polled strongly in high migration areas.
The study, which was carried out by the Jena Institute for Democracy and Civil Society and commissioned by the far-left Amadeu Antonio Foundation, shows that AfD voters come from a variety of backgrounds including affluent middle-class voters, Die Welt reports.
One of the biggest shocks for the researchers was that the data refuted many of the assumptions on what sort of people voted for the AfD in September’s national election. Many had assumed the average AfD voter was a low-income East German living in an area relatively unaffected by mass migration.
According to the data, the number of AfD voters per capita in high migrant areas is much larger than previously expected, though the researchers claim the information is too broad to make any direct conclusions.
The rise of the AfD on the federal level is also linked to the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) the authors of the study claim. They say that in areas where the NPD did well in 2013, the AfD also showed very strong results.
One example given is the Sächsische Schweiz/Osterzgebirge constituency where the NPD scored 5 percent in 2013 and the AfD scored 35.5 percent in September. In this year’s national election the far-right NPD scored only 0.4 percent of the vote.
The AfD also did well in areas with low voter turnouts in 2013 like the Bavarian town of Deggendorf which saw an abstention rate of 39.6 percent in 2013 and an AfD vote of 19.2 percent this year.
After the failure of the “Jamaica” coalition talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens, many suspect a new election could be on the horizon.
Recent polls show that the AfD is likely to gain as many as 19 or more seats in a new election while the CDU vote is projected to shrink.
Another poll, taken before the official collapse of the negotiations, showed that a majority of Germans were positive on the idea of having new elections.