In Germany, political parties have less than a month to convince voters to support their platform in February’s federal election. There’s one electoral group in particular that might offer lagging parties an opportunity to make up lost ground: people with an immigration background.
An estimated 7.1 million eligible voters, or one in eight German voters, have an immigrant background — meaning they, or at least one of their parents, migrated to Germany.
This demographic tends to vote less frequently than people who do not have an immigration background. And sociologist Friederike Römer said they’re also less committed to voting for a particular party than they used to be.
Römer is an expert at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) and co-authored a study for the institute that investigates the everyday worries and party preferences of citizens with a history of migration.
“Among all the groups examined, the party with the highest potential is the [center-left Social Democratic Party],” she said. “About 20% of the voters who have a migrant background could see themselves voting for the [far-right Alternative for Germany]. But when we ask immigrant voters which party they believe has the expertise to solve current problems, they answer ‘none’ more frequently than people without an immigrant background.”
Another trend she’s found is that the newly formed populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the Left Party commonly have higher approval ratings among this demographic, while the Green Party does not fare as well.
What issues have appealed to immigrant voters?
For eligible voters with a history of immigration, inflation and the economy are high on their list of concerns.
“When it comes to material concerns, problems with their retirement plans or with their living situation, people with a migrant background often report that they are more concerned than people without a migrant background,” said Römer.
“We also see that people without a migrant background are often more concerned of falling victim to crime.”
Concerns like these have fueled the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has been campaigning on a xenophobic platform and railing against migrants but also visibly straining to reach new voters. Römer has observed that this strategy can be quite successful with immigrant voters.
“[The AfD] is very good at addressing certain subpopulations with immigrant roots and convincing them of their politics. To immigrants who have been living in Germany for a long while now, especially those from the [Middle East and North Africa] region or from Turkey, they offer: ‘You’re not the problem. The new ones are the problem.’ That’s been very catchy, especially on social media.”
Why German-Turkish voters tend not to vote
Yunus Ulusoy, a researcher the Center for Studies on Turkey and Integration Research (ZfTI) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, lists the following groups the AfD’s strategy might attract: people of Turkish origin, those critical of Islam, immigrants with a reasonably high assimilation rate and an immigrant history reaching back decades or those who see new arrivals as competition.
But he told DW that these groups “are fairly marginal. When I listen to what the AfD says about migration and Islam, I can’t imagine that the party would be particularly well-received in the Turkish-rooted community right now.”
In the past, naturalized citizens with Turkish roots often supported the Social Democrats. While the SPD is still popular among this demographic, their pull has become weaker recently.
Instead, more and more German-Turkish voters tend to skip voting altogether. Compared with other groups with a migrant history, this subgroup has a low voter turnout.
“There is a large group of young people who have experienced discrimination and ostracization, and this has given them the impression that they don’t really belong,” said Ulusoy.
“This feeling is hurtful, and this hurt can cause young people to turn away from politics entirely and not even bother voting.”
Ulusoy also criticized politicians who were far too concerned with pointing out supposed deficits and problems within the Turkish community, instead of highlighting positive developments and conveying a feeling of acceptance.
‘Late repatriates’ have high affinity to AfD
Another large subgroup among people with a migrant background are ethnic German resettlers from the former Soviet Union, commonly referred to as “late repatriates.”
They, too, widely share the feeling of not belonging. When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, German-Russian citizens felt particularly out of place, explained historian Jannis Panagiotidis from the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna.
The AfD profited from this sentiment and was eager to capture this demographic early on, he told DW. “The AfD is the most open about trying to stylize itself as the party of Russia Germans,” he said.
Panagiotidis explained that the party mostly did this with authoritarian promises, committing itself to law-and-order policies and adopting a critical stance toward migration. This, he said, was very important to a part of this clientele, and especially to those who themselves felt insecure and therefore opposed to others immigrating, particularly from Muslim countries.
According to studies, migrants from the former Soviet Union rate the topic of immigration as particularly important. As skepticism toward the immigration policy of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel grew, support for her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) began to fade. Traditionally, this particular demographic had been a big supporter of the CDU.
While the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have begun courting these voters with pension policies — enticing for the aging demographic of late repatriates — Panagiotidis believes the AfD and especially the BSW will profit from recent politics developments.
“Many from the post-Soviet community used to vote for the Left Party,” he said. “Many of these voters have now turned to the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. Should this party continue to exist, he added, the BSW has the potential to be successful not only with post-Soviet immigrant voters.
“It does not position itself as far right, which could scare off immigrant voters,” said Panagiotidis.
This article was originally written in German.
