If the LGBTIQ community had their way, the Bundestag election for the SPD and CDU in the upcoming Bundestag election would end even worse than generally expected. Accordingly, the Greens were clearly ahead with 52.6 percent, followed by the left with 17.4 percent of the vote, the CDU and SPD would only achieve single-digit results. This is the result of an election study for the Bundestag election, which a team of political scientists from the Justus Liebig University (JLU) Gießen, the University of Vienna and the Danube University Krems presented on Tuesday. Since 2015, the scientists around Prof. Dr. Dorothèe de Nève carried out several studies on the voting behavior of LGBTIQ. Now they have presented their latest numbers, which are unflattering to the current government.

For four weeks, between July 15 and August 15, the team collected data online.

The JLU website was used for advertising, but most of all via social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or via multipliers.

According to the institute, more than 9,000 submissions were received.

In the end, the datasets of 5149 entries remained that could be examined.

In an international comparison, the present study on the 2021 federal election is the LGBTIQ election study with the largest sample worldwide to date.

CDU would fail at the five percent hurdle

In Germany, it is estimated that between 1.8 and 3 million eligible voters are LGBTIQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, intersexual or queer).

The LGBTIQ election studies are therefore “very important for political and scientific reasons, as the aim is to increase the visibility of people with these sexual preferences and their political interests, to break down prejudices and to contribute to LGBTIQ being adequately represented in science and politics the study says.

499 people from Hessen also took part in the survey.

Data from people between 18 and 97 years of age were evaluated; on average, the respondents were a little over 35 years old.

After 2017, this federal election is the second to be evaluated by the scientists.

And this time the two big parties did even worse than they did four years ago.

The CDU, for example, only achieved 3.2 percent in this year's election study (6.9 in 2017).

The SPD is downright falling, but it should be noted that the study cannot reflect the upswing in many surveys of the past few weeks, as the survey took place earlier.

From its 21.2 percent in 2017, it was only able to save 9.2 percent in this year's survey.

Kind of a negative choice

The FDP loses from 9.1 percent four years ago to 7.1 percent in this year's evaluation. The AfD loses from 2.7 to 2.6 percent. But the left is also losing: it comes to 17.4 percent, but has lost 5.4 percent compared to 2017. The big winners are Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, who gain a whopping 23.6 percent and thus land on 52.6 percent in the 2021 election study of the LGBTIQ community.

The largest subgroup of respondents are gay men. This shows that gays tend to prefer the FDP or SPD compared to the entire sample, but especially compared to lesbians.

At a low level, this also applies to the CDU / CSU and AfD.

While only 2.4 percent of the lesbians surveyed would like to vote for the FDP in the upcoming general election, 11.2 percent of the gays.

The Greens, on the other hand, benefit from the approval of lesbian women (63.3 percent).

Above all, the rejection of the Bundestag to reform the transsexual law, for example, has at least influenced the decision of many respondents.

Participants who now want to vote for the Left and the Greens are particularly dissatisfied with these decisions.

The participants in the online questionnaire for the LGBTIQ election study also had the opportunity to justify their party preference in their own words. Many responded by saying that they would choose the “lesser evil” or choose a particular party for strategic reasons. According to the scientists, it is often a kind of negative selection: What is chosen is what remains at the end of the rejections.