Why is the AfD doing so much better in elections in eastern Germany than in the west?

This question is very topical again after the federal election.

In the east the AfD got 19.1 percent, in the west 8.2 percent of the second votes.

In the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in June 2021, the AfD even received 20.8 percent.

For comparison: In the two previous state elections in March 2021 in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, the AfD's share of the vote was 9.7 and 8.3 percent.

These are completely different dimensions than the AfD share of the vote in the east.

One explanation for the significantly higher AfD share of the vote in the eastern federal states seems to be the attitude of the population towards immigrants, which differs significantly from the attitude in the west.

A new study by ZEW colleague Martin Lange from Mannheim shows that citizens who grew up in what was then the GDR are much more skeptical of immigration than citizens who grew up in western Germany.

Martin Lange evaluated data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) over the period 1999–2016.

The effect is numerically significant: Anyone who grew up in eastern Germany is 15 percent more likely to reject immigration than someone who grew up in the west.

Spying in the east has made people suspicious

There are several reasons why socialism aroused skepticism about immigration in the GDR. In socialism everything and everyone should be the same. This also includes the desire that peoples communicate and that people are friendly across borders. In practice, however, a camp and groupthink quickly emerged: the socialists on the one hand and the capitalists on the other. The friend-foe thinking lived in socialism has been carried over to people's attitudes towards immigration. In addition, there is a lack of trust in fellow human beings (and the state).

You can't blame anyone for spying in the East that made people suspicious of third parties, especially strangers. A third reason could have been the lack of experience with competition in the east. Competition was an attribute of the capitalist West. In the labor market, especially in the low-wage sector, many workers fear an increase in competition as a result of immigration. That too may be a thorn in the side of some citizens in the eastern federal states.

In a new study, we used data from the University of Konstanz's student survey.

On behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education, around 8,000 students at German universities and technical colleges have been surveyed in 13 waves since the beginning of the 1980s.

These data show significantly greater differences in attitudes towards immigration between students from East and West for the 1990s than the data for the total population from the SOEP show.

For example, students who grew up in East Germany were 109 percent more likely to fully agree with the statement that cultural infiltration should be warded off than students who grew up in West Germany.

Differences have become smaller

The differences in the assessment of immigration between students socialized in the East and in the West have, however, become significantly smaller when young adults who grew up in the East went to study in the West. This is shown in turn in the probability with which students agreed to the statement that cultural infiltration should be warded off. Students who grew up and studied in the East were significantly more likely to agree with the statement than students who grew up in the East and studied in the West.

Having studied in the West reduces the effect of being from the East by around 70 percent.

The students were young (early 20s) and experienced the new living conditions in the West in a phase of life that was decisive for their personality development (“impressionable years”).

The environment in the west left formative impressions on the young adults from the east.

For many years, immigration did not play a major role in the political process in reunified Germany.

That changed - Corona may also let this be forgotten at times - with the refugee crisis in summer 2015. The AfD has come to the voters.

Especially in the eastern federal states.

It stands to reason that the after-effects of socialism in the GDR are reflected today in attitudes towards immigration in AfD voting.

Björn Kauder is a Senior Economist at the Institute of German Economy in Cologne.

Niklas Potrafke teaches at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and heads the Ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy.