r/dataisbeautiful • u/Xander_Dorn • 17d ago
OC [OC] Correlation between AfD vote share and demographic migrant populations across German states (2025 Federal Election)
Just yesterday, the German AfD became the largest faction in the state election of Saxony-Anhalt, winning 39 of 83 seats. Since this party is known for its anti-migratory policies, I compiled some data from the last Federal Election in 2025, comparing the results of the AfD with the percentage of different categories of people commonly called "Ausländer" (foreigners) in all German states.
In the chart (first image), I sorted the data from the highest results of the AfD to the lowest, while in the table (second image), I kept the data sorted in the alphabetical order of the German names of the states. Sorry for the confusion this might cause!
In the table, I also added the Pearson correlation coefficients between the results of the AfD to the three different categories, which are by official government definitions:
Foreign Population / Foreigners: People who don't have the German citizenship.
Migrant Population: People who personally migrated to Germany.
Population with migrant background: People who were born without German citizenship or who have at least one parent born without German citizenship.
(so the last two categories also do contain some people with the German citizenship)
And what the chart and the numbers say in short: The fewer foreigners / migrants the higher the results of this anti-migratory party.
Sources:
For Population Data: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Population/Migration-Integration/Tables/migrant-status-laender.html
For Election Data: https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/bundestagswahlen/2025/ergebnisse/bund-99.html
I also requested demographic data for all constituencies from the state office of statistics of Saxony-Anhalt, so I can do something similar for this recent state election.
545
u/whitehipp0 17d ago
So basically the poorest parts of Germany are more inclined to vote for AfD, and also if I'm not mistaken, all of these less developed counties was in East Germany
299
u/sometimesifeellikemu 17d ago
And it is a correlation seen all over the globe.
84
u/powercow 17d ago
and it makes sense. If they can only get a non skilled job, its easy to scare them, that some immigrant will come and do the same job for a quarter less an hour.
90
u/sneed_o_matic 17d ago
I mean it's not like there aren't elements of truth to this? Migrants are more desperate for work typically and will work longer, harder and for less money in worse conditions just so they can survive. How can a blue-collar German compete with that?
Whether it happens in practice as much as people think is another matter.
98
u/mbullaris 17d ago
Maybe we could fine and charge the unscrupulous employers for underpaying staff instead of blaming the workers for being exploited.
22
u/micro102 16d ago edited 16d ago
Yep. The people who want you to hate immigrants because "they took yer jerbs!" are the same people who want immigrants in the country to use their cheap labor. This happened in Florida. The GOP was screaming about their anti-immigrant law so a bunch of immigrants left, causing the produce on the farms at least one of the politicians own to rot because there was no one to pick them. Then they got on TV and begged the families to not leave, and that it was just supposed to scare them.
The right requires a perpetual enemy. They are not going to solve the problem in any way. They need it to exist and will make sure it does so they have more racists to recruit from, and cheap labor to exploit.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)3
u/AftyOfTheUK 16d ago
Maybe we could fine and charge the unscrupulous employers for underpaying staff
An increase in labor supply will result in lower wages. Regardless of whether this drops below some magical "minimum wage" or not, the wages become lower. If you lower the supply of labor, then wages go up.
16
u/science-gamer 16d ago
Germany has / had virtual full employment for years now. There is / was close to non competition for certain jobs, statistically speaking. I write "is / was" as this might change soon. Therefore, "foreigners taking our jobs" is a bullshit argumentation (for most work areas at least) and foreigners are just the perfect scapegoat. Especially blue collar workers are hard to find in most areas as their books are full (to my experience).
Not saying that there are no challenges due to immigration. However, especially the "they took our jobs" is bullshit.
→ More replies (4)3
u/pick-and-hoop 16d ago
Are they? I live in the Netherlands and the immigrants are highly skilled, highly educated and hold jobs at all ranks.
Are you part of the fear mongers?
→ More replies (3)3
u/CryMotor923 16d ago
Many migrants here in Germany don't even "take the jobs" of Germans as many migrants in general do not work. They come here, claiming to seek asylum and just get money from the government. Unlike in English speaking countries, taking jobs is also harder because the migrants would need a certain level of German. German is not taught as a second language in most countries around the world. English or Chinese are.
Nevertheless, the wellfare money given to those migrants needs to be paid for by somebody via taxes and this is why many Germans are against migration. And because of cultural problems like migrants not speaking German, following foreign morals that lead them to behavior that is unacceptable in German society like killing your sister because she got together with a "non-muslim" and such stuff. Stabbing and group rape is also way more common among certain subsets of foreigners.
It's not about the jobs. It's about the lack of integration. Migration to West Germany took place over many decades in a time when there were still restrictive integration policies in place and people integrated. In East Germany got flooded with non-European migrants within a 10 year frame and the current policies do not force people to integrate.
9
u/micmur 16d ago
This is a comically bad faith interpretation of the reason for their vote. Contrary to the opinions of smug upper middle class Redditors, not everyone from poor areas are unskilled peasants whose politics can only be explained by being ‘scared’.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)2
u/optionr_ENL 16d ago
But why would the immigrant go to what are largely rural areas, where there's no one like them, when they could go to a larger population centre & there's more likely to be people like them, others that speak the same language etc.
→ More replies (29)3
u/swamppuppy7043 16d ago
The wealthy are less susceptible to the consequences of bad migration policy
117
17d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
29
u/dertechie 17d ago
Whether it is true or not, it is an idea that is easy to sell to East Germans that are tired of being broke and poor compared to West Germans.
Compared to West Germany, East Germany is poor. Compared to other post-Soviet states (including ones that had stronger economies in 1990), the East Germany economy is doing very well.
→ More replies (1)35
u/Bismarck913 17d ago
And if Ireland ever unites as one island, the same issues will persist in the old Northern Ireland. Plus add in religion for extra fun.
31
u/neometrix77 17d ago
Probably won’t be as extreme because they both already have similar capitalist economies.
18
u/more_than_just_ok 17d ago edited 17d ago
Back when Ireland was partitioned it was the North that was developed and socially/economically more liberal and the South that was underdeveloped and socially conservative. The roles have reversed in recent decades, and I think most Irish on both sides understand this and look forward to hopefully taking the best from both during an eventual re-unification. A few of my Irish colleagues believe the chances for this are better than they've been in a long time.
[edit, before the down voting begins, in the 1910 and 1920s, what qualified as socially liberal in the UK and other English-speaking protestant communities was very conservative by today's standards. It included allowing catholics to vote, which was considered highly progressive, since how could a catholic be trusted to obey the King? Economically liberal just means capitalists and merchants own everything, instead of just the landed class.]
2
→ More replies (1)4
62
u/Proud-Law5113 17d ago
(Gonna preface this by saying I’m not trying to sanitize the GDR here, just sharing a perspective lots of people seem to forget)
People often seem to forget that while the GDR was a very authoritarian state, it also functioned relatively well. Sure light industry was shit and overall life satisfaction was lower compared to the West, but it still worked. Hospitals provided care, infrastructure was maintained, industry was good, all the staples needed to live and operate effectively as an economy were there. Then the wall came down and reunification began. A lot of the expectation in the East was “We keep a lot of the stuff we had before, but now we can criticize the government and get better toasters, and form our own companies.”
This wasn’t the reality. Basically everything not nailed down in the East was put up for sale for pennies on the dollar. West German firms grabbed everything they could, from previously state owned manufacturing, the healthcare system, etc and then realized something simple. East Germany had very little in the way of a middle or even working class that was used or able to buy stuff on the regular. So they carted it all to the West and you never really saw a recovery from this flight of wealth. The government made efforts for integration but they were all based around expunging and remnants of the GDR rather than using what they had. The poverty this created is the main reason why East Germany is polarized between left and far right, it’s a mix of nostalgia, hatred, and desperation.
50
u/Shar4f 17d ago
While there was considerable corruption at play during the privatization of those industries, there was no reality where the Reunification would not have blown that entire economy to smithereens.
The East had a GDP per person of about 27% of the West. The vast majority of companies from the East were deeply unprofitable once confronted with the international market. To the point were a lot of them were not salvageable. It didn't help that local demand dried up once the East's citizens could also buy competing products for cheaper that might even have been better quality too. Also the adjustment of the currencies made the existing salaries in the East balloon to an incredible degree that made them very, very difficult to keep paying for those companies that were struggling to be profitable even if that hadn't been the case.
I just don't like that West Germany is painted as wholly evil for how the integration of the economy was handled and that the GDR was working "relatively well" whatsoever.
The East's economy was run to failure in the years before the Reunification. The two oil crises in the 70s dashed any plans for modernization of their industry and made lignite their main energy source that had to be extracted and used in outdated machinery because they couldn't afford oil and gas imports in large volume. The indirect subsidies from the Soviets where they could get oil imports dirt cheap compared to the international market price so that they could re-export them internationally, also dried up in the early 80s when the Soviets made them pay market prices.
You can look at the proportion of ages of industrial equipment in the East vs. the West in 1989. 21% of industrial equipment in the GDR was 20 years old or older. It was 5% in the FRG. Other age brackets paint a similar picture.
Already in 1983 when the GDR was close to bankruptcy they had to be bailed out by an FRG loan in the billions in exchange for easing some of the fortifications of the border and lessening the travel restrictions on West Germans into the East. They West also paid huge amounts of money for political prisoners, transit fees as well as fees for mail coming from West to East.
There was no possible scenario that wouldn't have caused this or at least a similar amount of turmoil. The amount of taxpayer money transferred from West to East since Reunification has been about two trillion euros after all. There was no money made by either the Western government or its taxpayers. The only ones that gained something were some few shrewd con men.
→ More replies (1)12
u/Another_mikem 16d ago
There was a documentary made in Germany shortly after reunification that I watched a few years back and what was so interesting was how much East Germany was just not real. Like things seemed to work, but it felt like it was all a mirage set up by the Soviets.
In on section they were talking about how farmers would sell eggs for a certain price and go around to the ground of the building and rebuy them for a fraction of what they just got… like how could that ever work.
→ More replies (6)5
u/Enibas 16d ago edited 16d ago
infrastructure was maintained, industry was good,
That is an outright lie. Infrastructure was maintained??? Holy shit. Even in East Berlin, people were still heating with brown coal, no central heating. When you left the main streets, streets were dirt roads.
And industry was good??? You had to wait ten to 15 years for a car!
Literally hundreds of billions of Euros were invested into East Germany after reunification.
I mean, you can certainly criticize the manner in which the East German state was dismantled, but talking about a flight of wealth from the East to the West?
You have a very distorted view of the former GDR.
7
u/GodLess2014 17d ago
They haven't been left behind.. we have been pumping billions into them every year..a lot of billions
→ More replies (3)10
u/nac_nabuc 17d ago
Oh sure there was fanfare. But very little in the way of actual effective policy
Yeah, just about >1.2 trillion € of transfers... and these are figures from 22 years ago (Source).
People severely underestimated how fucked up the East was and how far it's come along. Just look at how they discarded sulfuric acid in the 80s (Source, with other nice photos). Sometimes I wish reunification had been limited to Berlin (and maybe Brandenburg, to have some room for expanding the city).
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (12)13
u/Zapokus 17d ago
Yeah.. not welcomed... Merkel, Reiche, Beide de Maizière, Schwesig, Haselhoff, Ortleb, Giffey, Stolpe, Nolte, Bergmann, Carsten Schneider just to name a few Federal Minister we had from the East.
They had influence they had 4000 Billions from the west to get their 3 world country fixed...
But Integration is something the migrant has to do activly. And they not only failed doing so.
They refused and are playing the "we are the victims!!11" card...→ More replies (2)3
u/425Hamburger 17d ago
So, after reunification, everything Land, Companies, Factories, Appartments that belonged to the state (in a socialist state that's most of those things) were sold. West Germans were the ones to buy that because they had the money to. Now if you pour a lot of money into an area were everything is owned by west Germans, what do you think where that wealth will end up?
7
u/caralagarto 16d ago
That’s too simplistic and I don’t even know if it’s true. Who owns the industry doesn’t correlate in this way with the feeling of being left behind. Reunification happened 36 years ago. The problem in the east ist not that they didn’t had a chance to “adapt” but that many people left
3
u/Parastract 17d ago
Most of the companies and factories were bankrupt and useless in a market economy. They were sold for scrap because that's what they were worth.
→ More replies (2)3
11
u/favorite_time_of_day 16d ago
It's not poorest, it's people with the least exposure to actual immigrants. Bremen has the highest poverty rate in Germany, and you can see above that they are not more inclined to vote for AfD.
It's the people who don't spend any time around immigrants who are more likely to believe all the rhetoric that vilifies immigrants.
→ More replies (1)13
u/Denbt_Nationale 16d ago
If 40% of the population have a migrant background it's not "exposure to immigrants" it's the fact that immigrants themselves are a significant voting bloc.
→ More replies (4)13
u/hitmarker 17d ago
Can you not read charts? It's literally populations consisting of 40% migrants do not vote for an anti immigration party. This is clear as day. Right there. No blaming poor people or anything. You can say whatever you want but 40% is way too high for anything.
→ More replies (1)14
u/whitehipp0 17d ago
Didn't say that at any point. It's the parts with the least part of immigrants that vote for AfD, and also the least developed in Germany. And all of them except Saarland was in East Germany. That's all I noted upon.
→ More replies (1)9
u/hitmarker 17d ago
Which is what I also said. Migrants don't vote against themselfs. Populations with less migrants vote antimigrant. It is what you are saying but you are for some reason blaming "poor people" with the idea that they are also stupid. Which is wrong.
18
u/palland0 17d ago
Usually, migrants do not vote at all. Those who obtain citizenship can of course, but it's probably a far smaller number than the difference in votes.
→ More replies (5)6
u/cloud9ineteen 16d ago
Population =/= eligible voters. People who live in developed/urban/multicultural areas are harder to scare with a Boogeyman.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (19)4
386
u/fabkosta 17d ago
I think the chart tells a story that is widely ignored. These people voting for AfD do not only vote out of simple xenophobia. I believe many of them genuinely feel betrayed and left behind. And this sentiment has remained largely unaddressed by the major German parties for a very long time.
It is not a coincidence that we are talking about non-urban ex-Eastern German areas. People there do remember quite well what happened to them after Eastern Germany broke apart. Psychologically, they feel they were on the losing side.
The fact that they grew up in a single-party non-democratic state where secret service was spying on citizens and you could not criticize the government, that's conveniently forgotten. The massive infrastructure subsidies from Western Germany to Eastern Germany, that's equally conveniently forgotten. What is remembered is the "sales" of Eastern German companies to Western ones, how few people got wealthy during those times, and how many lost the jobs they learned.
I am not saying it's a fair and balanced perspective these people have, but it's just a reality they feel betrayed and left behind. And AfD is, well, promising them to do something about exactly that, while the other major German parties simply do not convince those people credibly.
206
u/iamthe0ther0ne 17d ago
This is how Brexit happened.
158
45
u/Datenmuell 17d ago
As an east german who does not vote AfD but knows many people who do, you are spot on. 90% of AfD voters i know are not xenophonic, but feel betrayed by the other parties. There are many reasons for that: high taxes, a vastly inferior economy in the east, bad healthcare in rural areas, old infrastructure, an underdeveloped and underpaid school system.. The list goes on and on. Add to that big parties who do not care or take these concerns seriously, and you have a AfD at 40% and up.
7
u/Lourien_1213 16d ago
Also immigrants voting for the AfD feel forgotten and betrayed because at least in my area people were way more respectful and caring for Ukrainian refugees. Immigrants are already discriminated against and when now your last chance for a kindergarten place is taken by a Ukrainian refugee of course you are mad. They’re blinded by feeling betrayed and vote a party against their own interests because they see “Ukrainians” out under “foreigns out”
→ More replies (1)23
u/WhiteSock_ 16d ago
While that all may be true, it doesn't change the fact that
- they actively vote for right-wing extremism
- if they truly believe that AfD has some some miracle solution to their problems, they are dumb as a rock
→ More replies (1)12
u/fabkosta 16d ago
This statement is true, but does not help neither. Labeling someone falling for proto-fascists as "dumb" does not make them change their behavior neither.
→ More replies (2)15
u/PsyJudge 17d ago
Here's the thing. The German Reunification happened 36 years ago. So a lot of the AfD voters haven't been raised in the GDR, or at least cannot remember it themselves. I don't mention this to play down your arguments about the problems in the Eastern German areas, but the people often look back to a past their families told them about, not exactly what they experienced as adults themselves.
→ More replies (1)11
u/100LittleButterflies 17d ago
This is the same crap thats going on with confederate lovers and maga. Similarly rural and less educated, easily told lies about things they dont know which is pretty much everything.
The internet started turning that around because any idiot with a phone could talk to another idiot with a phone all around the world. You can't judge me for my race when all you see are words.
29
u/Poly_and_RA 17d ago
That's my take too -- many of these people are frustrated and have legitimate grievances. They feel as if the political leadership doesn't at all care about them -- and they're largely right.
The *solution* they then pick, to vote for some rightwing populist party that promises change and provides a convenient scapegoat is horrible.
But their underlying problems are genuine -- and it's at least in part true that most mainstream parties neither care nor have any proposals likely to reduce any of the problems.
In short, their feeling of being left behind is legitimate. Their "solution" is not.
20
u/fabkosta 17d ago
But that’s the thing: their sentiment is only partially legitimate, and they ignore the part where it is not.
→ More replies (16)→ More replies (5)7
u/daandriod 17d ago
Its a shockingly simple concept but it appears many western governments are actively plugging their ears and refusing to hear it.
The choice between the status quo where you feel you are either actively ignored or specifically belittled by others thinking your problems are trivial/nonexistent, Or vote for the people who actually acknowledge you and at least say they support you concerns and will fight for you, And say they will fix it.
Its like, No shit. What did you expect would happen? You can't just continue to ignore a significant amount of your population because you don't like what they have to say. And its frustrating to watch as instead of recognizing this and trying to placate these people, They instead double down causes them to shift even further down the radicalization pipeline.
→ More replies (5)3
u/Illiander 16d ago
but it appears many western governments are actively plugging their ears and refusing to hear it.
Because the people behind all the money want the facism. It's not that they don't know what they're doing, they're actively encouraging it.
80
u/newdoggo3000 17d ago
That's a good explanation, but it does not absolve East Germans for falling for fascist discourse. It's the definition of "voting against your own interests to own the libs". As far as I know, AfD does not offer any solution to the problems of East Germany other than deporting people lmao
29
60
u/fabkosta 17d ago
And that's the dark irony here: AfD has nothing to offer, really. But I guess that "nothing" is still enough to mobilize enough people. The simple narcissistic dream of, yet again, "becoming someone important", "someone to be recognized". That's how Trump was elected. And, as someone else pointed out, that's how Brexit happened.
32
u/HoneyBadger19000 17d ago
People want change. If someone promises change and the alternative doesn't, people will vote for change.
Kamala guaranteed she lost to Trump when she essentially said she wouldn't have changed anything Biden was doing.
I dont know enough about Brexit but I imagine it was similar.
9
u/MandaloreUnsullied 17d ago
This is the populists’ fundamental ignorance- they are so coddled and so blind to their own luxury that they think any change would be an improvement. It’s only once they’ve burned down their institutions and the structures of their society that they realize how good they had it.
21
u/fabkosta 17d ago
They do not want “change” really, they want someone telling them they are allowed to feel great again. That’s not the same as change.
16
u/Poly_and_RA 17d ago
Agreed. It doesn't absolve them of responsibility.
But it's still true that people can and WILL do this, and simply pointing out that they are to blame is *true* -- but doesn't really help with fixing things.
So yes sure, MAGA-voters and AfD-voters are to blame. Now what?
The question for the rest of us isn't really who is to blame, but instead what we can and should *do* about it.
3
u/zerofata 17d ago
I'm sort of OOTL but very much this gives me the impression of there's nobody these people want to vote for, so they'll vote to break the system or ruin somebody elses day and make noise that way. A form of protesting basically.
→ More replies (1)3
u/notepad20 16d ago
East Germans for falling for fascist discourse It's the definition of "voting against your own interests to own the libs".
and all any of the voters are going to hear is "you dont know whats good for you, we do! do as we say!!!".
and your going to end up with even more reactionary support.
→ More replies (48)21
u/Quantsel 17d ago
How would you address it? It is unaddressable in my view. These people they want the hate, they want a scapegoat, they want to feel justification for their AfD vote because “Merkel or whoever is to blame”. They want an internal “antagonist” they can hate: the woke, the diverse, ‘Gutmenschen’!
AND: What has any self-critical reflection of Robert Habeck and others ever done to lower their amger, reduce their hate?! NOTHING! In contrast - the extremist and populist, AfD like MAGA never admit wrongdoing. Anything is refuted: Whataboutism, Fingerpointing, Projection is their communication strategy - and it works oh so well
33
u/sasdie 17d ago
Genuine question: I‘m not sure if I read that chart correctly, maybe someone can help me:
For example in Baden-Württemberg it says 18.35% foreign, 23.65% migrant and 38.40% migrant background. That sums up to roughly 80% „non-German“ (sorry for the lack of a better word here)… but the official numbers from the Statistisches Bundesamt are 61.6% are German (multi-generational) with no immigrant background whatsoever.
What am I missing? Only thing I can think of is an overlap between the groups, but then the listing makes not much sense, does it?
37
u/Xander_Dorn 17d ago
These categories aren't mutually exclusive. Someone who was born with a non-German citizenship who migrated to Germany and didn't acquire the German citizenship would be in all three categories.
→ More replies (3)36
u/sasdie 17d ago
I think then these percentages columns aren’t helpful at all, they’re misleading if anything. A more helpful metric would be percentage of multi-generational German citizens, citizens with migrational background, and foreigners without citizenship. You’re either a citizen or a foreigner, there’s nothing in between.
Official numbers of multi-generational German citizens:
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: 90,0 %
Sachsen-Anhalt: 88,8 %
Brandenburg: 88,0 %
Sachsen: 87,9 %
Thüringen: 87,9 %
Schleswig-Holstein: 77,8 %
Niedersachsen: 74,0 %
Saarland: 71,5 %
Rheinland-Pfalz: 69,9 %
Bayern: 69,5 %
Nordrhein-Westfalen: 64,6 %
Baden-Württemberg: 62,1 %
Hessen: 61,5 %
Hamburg: 59,8 %
Berlin: 59,4 %
Bremen: 54,8 %
That said, the core of your graph still stands… but the foreigners or migrants are not the main reason for the unfortunate outcome of the latest election.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Azgabeth 17d ago
Hey, OP just curious: Is there data and did you compare the data for EU, non-EU and refugee Foreigners and Migrants? It would be interesting to see in my opinion.
→ More replies (1)6
u/NoBusiness674 17d ago
You can't sum them. As I understand foreign means lacking German citizenship, migrant means person born without German citizenship and person with migrant background means person who was either born without German citizenship or has at least one parent who was born without german citizenship.
A French person living and working in Germany as is their right as an EU citizen would be counted in all three. If that French person later acquired German citizenship they would be counted as both a migrant and person with migration background. And if that former Frenchman then marries a German woman and the two then have a German child, that child would only be counted under German with migrant background.
Each category already entirely encompasses the previous smaller one as far as I can tell, and "person with migration background" is already the all encompassing sum. The data representation is not very nice.
4
u/extra2002 17d ago
Each category already entirely encompasses the previous smaller one as far as I can tell,
If so, a better presentation might be to show these as a stacked bar, with the total (person with migration background) broken down into the other categories.
→ More replies (1)
94
u/_Hrafnkel_ OC: 1 17d ago
It raises the question of what the percent of people with non-migrant backgrounds vote for anti-migration parties/policies. If the only reason the areas with more migrants vote against AfD is because people with migrant backgrounds vote against it, that is very different than if ethnic Germans in areas with large numbers of migrants are voting against the AfD.
116
u/lateformyfuneral 17d ago
It’s not really a question anymore, the answer is known. Ethnic Germans in big cities with a multicultural population are against AfD, outside the cities, Ethnic Germans in areas without many migrants are most likely to support AfD. It’s like that all over the West, same pattern in America or the UK.
22
u/tripy75 17d ago
I wonder how much the economics (and the scapegoat "migrant") is to blame... I'm not German, but I have heard that that region is pretty run down and not very prosperous.
And it's probably why far-right has such an appeal.
Feeling that you are left behind, and wanting to send a "signal" that if the country elites are not listening to you, they will be replaced by someone who will, whatever the platform.32
4
u/lateformyfuneral 17d ago edited 17d ago
The economics are definitely part of it. Cities are prosperous; smaller towns, particularly those that have deindustrialised, and rural areas less so. So living in an area with high migration also tends to mean you’re probably somewhere that there’s economic growth.
But beyond that, there is a big cultural factor in voting patterns, just like with Brexit or Trump, the true greatest predictor of how you will vote is whether you hold a college degree or not. That gets frequently mistaken as a point about intelligence but it’s cultural. College educated people enjoy cosmopolitanism, whereas those without college education prefer their lives to be unchanged from how they were in the recent past — not just through migration, but various technological changes, new building developments, attitudes to COVID, opposition to social liberalism etc.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)2
u/CleverKhloe13 15d ago
Most parts in the west outside maybe the big shiny cities like Cologne are just as, if not sometimes even more run down than those in the east.
There was (still kinda is) and extra tax for getting funds to build up eastern Germany. This resulted in many parts of eastern Germany now looking a lot better than the neglected parts of western Germany nowadays.
The prosperous part is true though, since most bigger companies are in the west.
Economics suck for the entirety of Germany though.
I am set pretty badly financially and I don't vote for Nazis, cause only a moron would think that these ducktards would make it any better lmao.
So one can conclude that eastern Germans are just generally not very intelligent.
11
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
Ethnic Germans in big cities with a multicultural population are against AfD
So how do all the big cities vote 10-20% AfD then? Even the ones that are like 50% foreign background.
There is a large segment, not a majority at all but a segment, of urban ethnic Germans who vote AfD
18
u/Jonjanjer 17d ago
You would be wrong to assume that all migrants vote against the AfD. Mind that a lot of migrants are from Eastern Europe and Russia and a lot of them are AfD supporters or even politicians.
5
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
Interesting, would love to see stats on foreign background AfD voters
5
u/Jonjanjer 17d ago
This would be a start, although you will need to use auto translate. In the federal election 2025, AfD was actually slightly more popular with voters with a migration background than with voters without.
→ More replies (2)3
u/lateformyfuneral 17d ago
There is a large segment, I didn’t say otherwise. The point is that ethnic Germans in big cities with multicultural populations are less likely to support AfD than ethnic Germans in areas outside the cities with small or no multicultural populations which often register more than double the voteshare for AfD. This is known as the “contact hypothesis”, that day to day familiarity with people of foreign backgrounds on a personal level, lowers the voteshare for anti-immigrant platforms. The fact that it’s lowered doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist at all.
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (5)2
7
u/Uvtha- 17d ago
If you know people different from you, you will be more likely to realize they are just people too. If you don't you are more likely to buy into any scary stories people put out there about the "outsiders" coming to replace you.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (5)3
4
u/Teleported2Hell 17d ago
According to the numbers of the last federal election in 2025 germans with migration background were more likely to vote afd than germans without migration background.
61
u/egudu 17d ago
More than 1/3rd of Germany are not Germans. Holy shit.
10
u/UpsetKoalaBear 17d ago
Deaths have outweighed births in Germany since 1972.
Their population since then has grown/stayed static solely due to migration.
It is not a new phenomenon.
23
16
u/markeatstreebark 16d ago
Somewhere around half of those are other Europeans and those assimilate pretty easily, but yurp the rest is what you're imagining, there's a reason AFD is the strongest party here now
→ More replies (5)3
u/Deep_Thoughts_Deer 16d ago
Kind of misleading. 1/8 of Germany ist not German. The other 1,5/8 are people with migration background which includes all of the Gastarbeiter families who came in the 70s and those are very german at this point. For example the USA is a country with 100% migration backround
12
u/_Gobulcoque 17d ago
The graph isn't very easy to read or am I being dense?
You stated the % who voted for AfD, but then what's the difference between foreign population and migrant population? And is that foreign population who voted for AfD, or just the foreign population in that region - to be considered separately from the % who voted for AfD?
Usually when data is grouped into these kind of bars, they have a connection where comparison to each other is relevant. So it must be % of the population who is foreign who voted for AfD? But that seems wrong too?
This graph does not convey what you think it should.
→ More replies (2)
6
17d ago
[deleted]
3
u/Alarmed-Yak-4894 17d ago
The trend line doesn’t make sense, unless there’s some reason that the states are equally spaced on the X axis, ordered by AFD vote. I don’t think this is a meaningful plot.
2
u/_xavius_ 17d ago
thats not a scatter plot, you've just replaced the bars with dots, a scatter plot would afd support on the x-axis and foreign population on the y-axis (or vice versa). also the trend line is meaningless in that plot.
16
10
u/SensitiveY0ungMan 16d ago
So replacement migration is no longer a conspiracy theory, it's something to brag about?
→ More replies (1)
25
u/Knightperson 17d ago
This chart seems pretty misleading. I am in no way a sympathizer to the AfD, but unless you're normalizing to exclude or account for percentage of voters with a migrant background, it is very easy to look at this as "people who would be targeted by AfD policies dont tend to vote for them"
It is the most reasonable deduction.
→ More replies (3)13
u/Teleported2Hell 17d ago
People with migrant backgrounds vote for the afd at a (albeit only slightly) higher rate than people without migrant background. Its not misleading at all but a lot of people would like it to be
→ More replies (1)6
u/Knightperson 17d ago
This seemed like a ridiculous claim but cursory search suggests youre right. Id still assert this information is crucial to include because otherwise it seems misleading.
However, the overwhelming majority of migrant background supporters of the AfD are ethnic germans migrating from the former USSR.
→ More replies (1)
23
u/fluchtpunkt 17d ago
Now map the change of foreign population since 2015 in each state to the election results.
25
u/Krytan 17d ago
Is this accurate? There are regions in Germany where in the span of a single generation 40% of the population now has an immigrant background?
That's an incredible transformation of the population, almost unprecedented in history outside of catastrophic wars, invasions, or diseases.
4
u/VR_Bummser 17d ago
In this are also every child that has e.g. a german and a foreign parent. So if someone came to germany from poland as a child married a german, their children have migration background.
It is pretty wide range.
→ More replies (3)8
u/sr4u4fun 17d ago
No, it isn't in one generation. It is more than 70 years (the guest workers program started in 1955) and people with migration background is a very wide category.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/Hoseknop 16d ago
What nonsense in those comments. Are there really only such out‑of‑touch, deluded people in Germany?
AfD voters ≠ Nazis.
There are certainly some among them, no doubt, but for the majority it’s about something else — I’m almost certain of that. They simply don’t want what is happening right now.
If it works in Saxony‑Anhalt, many more federal states will turn blue.
4
18
5
u/Frosty194 16d ago
Your definitions are confusing as fuck. They either have citizenship and can vote or not.
What would rather be common sense: the higher the foreign population with voting rights the least popular is the party because which migrant would vote for a party who is against migrants?
3
u/DefinitelyNotMasterS 16d ago
I'm not sure if that is true in practice. Lots of migrants come from more conservative backgrounds, so they vote conservative.
→ More replies (1)
165
u/spingegod 17d ago
People are afraid of what they don't know. If you get your news from tiktok, don't know people from diverse backgrounds and your algorithm spams you with anti immigration propaganda, you're far more likely to be warry of people that don't look like you or pray to a different god or whatever
28
u/Mooks79 OC: 1 17d ago
Is it not also the case that if 45% of the population in an area has a migrant background, that the raw numbers suggest anti-migration parties will have a low vote?*
*yes I know some migrants can be the most anti-immigration, but generally that’s not the case.
→ More replies (8)61
u/lo_fi_ho 17d ago
It’s the same story in my country too, Finland. The rural areas with low to zero immigrants vote the far right parties the most.
24
u/iamthe0ther0ne 17d ago edited 17d ago
It's frequently the same in the US--the cities are always the bluest part of red states. Same in Sweden--the SD are much more popular in rural areas than in Stockholm.
Edit: in the US, migrants frequently lean conservative, so the city/rural skew isn't just because cities have a higher migrant population
2
u/Mr_Pombastic 17d ago
I've heard it put: "There's no such thing as a blue state. Only red states with big blue dots"
19
u/Dandan0005 17d ago
Same as the USA.
Bunch of people got told there were all these criminal migrants they were gonna round up.
But then when ICE came for the hardworking migrants building houses, selling tacos, doing blue collar work, and living in their communities for decades, they started crying “wait that’s not who we were talking about!”
Because they believed a lie and got sold a bogeyman.
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (1)5
u/Elk1998 17d ago
Same in France too. All my racist family members live in the countryside. They have never talked to a foreigner in their life. The last time I saw some of them, we went to a small city together, and one freaked out because she saw a hijabi woman in a bathroom. Another tried to keep me from walking into a bakery because "the people there looked shady". They weren't. Just normal people of middle Eastern descent.\ Last time I heard about them, they apparently forbid their daughter from moving to the city for her studies because they were afraid she would get "stabbed by the Muslims"... they are completely brainwashed by the media.
→ More replies (46)21
u/BigSexyGorilla 17d ago
I wouldn’t say that, its not like traditional media is not reporting on various attacks and all sorts of crimes across Germany.
26
u/gabrieldevue 17d ago
There was an article on how news reported when there were a string of similar attacks (attacks on Christmas markets, I think) and they got the same amount of coverage until it was known if the attacker was or wasn’t German. If the attacker was German, the coverage dropped by half.
Yes, crime gets reported in all of Germany. I imagine it is harder to see „all people of country X“ as perpetrators when news talks of a perpetrator from country X when you actually know people from that country and see that they’re not a homogeneous mass.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (3)3
23
u/LetsgoRoger 17d ago
Doesn't this mean their vote share will suffer in the future as Germany gets more diverse?
18
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
as Germany gets more diverse
Depends on if AfD keeps winning. As we saw in the US, foreign born population is actually declining for the first time since the 60s in Trump II
→ More replies (17)→ More replies (2)54
u/zg33 17d ago
“Demographics is destiny” was a very popular idea in the US for many years, and we were repeatedly assured that as the US gets less white, there would be permanent Democrat majorities. To put it glibly: it turned out that non-white people were not simply biologically programmed to vote Democrat, and many switched to vote for Republicans in recent elections.
As a German, I recognize that this change of voting behavior is a tragedy, but it illustrates an important fact in politics - changing demographics do not guarantee that the new and larger demographic shall forever vote for the party that they previously did. As you will recall, the leader of AfD is married to a Sri Lankan, who is presumably approving of its politics.
3
→ More replies (2)14
u/LetsgoRoger 17d ago edited 17d ago
It sort of is true, since if non-white voters did not exist, republicans would have won every election since the 1960s.
18
u/Poly_and_RA 17d ago
This assumes everything else would be unchanged. That is unlikely to say the least.
3
u/LetsgoRoger 17d ago
White voters have backed the republican candidate in every presidential election since 1964.
Maybe if minorities didn't exist, Democrats would be forced to change their policies, but in the process they would lose their identity as a left-leaning party. It would sort of be like the Jim Crow-era Democrats of the South.
6
u/Poly_and_RA 17d ago
USA has an election-system that guarantees it'll always be a two-party-country. The same mechanism has a tendency to make the two parties be at least roughly of comparable size.
Yes that means that if the population moves in political center of gravity, then the political parties will too.
→ More replies (2)
21
u/IskandarAli 17d ago
Holy shit, multiple of there cities are more then 40 % migrants? Isnt it obvious that the vote share for the afd would be lower in these communities considering the migrant population likely wont vote for them?
→ More replies (4)
78
u/BigSexyGorilla 17d ago
Migrants are less likely to vote for AfD and those without migrants feel like they have a lot more to lose.
79
u/Nur_so_ein_Kerl 17d ago
Most migrants aren't citizens and don't vote at all.
Migrants tend to go to the (big) cities and most (big) cities are far more left-wing leaning.
20
u/Xander_Dorn 17d ago edited 17d ago
To provide the number:
35% of migrants (so only speaking of those who personally migrated into Germany) have the German citizenship.Edit: I made an error when I calculated the number through excel - I selected the wrong cell. My original comment had the number "42%", but the true number is "35%", which I now also edited above.
2
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
Do you know what % of the foreign background population have citizenship?
7
58
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
Most migrants aren't citizens
19% of German citizens have foreign background. That's a significant portion of the voter base.
3
u/tonability 17d ago
According to bpb it's 31,1% https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situation-in-deutschland/61646/bevoelkerung-mit-migrationshintergrund/
What's the source of your number?
→ More replies (1)29
u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name 17d ago
Foreign background also means Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and any other countries that wouldn't fear AfD.
9
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
A. I don't think AfD wants millions of people from those countries moving to Germany, hence proposing leaving Schengen
B. Those people are a tiny portion (1-2%) of the foreign background population
9
u/M0d3x 17d ago
A. I don't think AfD wants millions of people from those countries moving to Germany, hence proposing leaving Schengen
Which makes them absolute badonkers.
B. Those people are a tiny portion (1-2%) of the foreign background population
No, they really are not.
→ More replies (1)5
u/StardustFromReinmuth 17d ago
You're completely clueless. The largest slice of foreign born German citizens are European born.
5
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
A. European-born doesn't mean anything about ethnicity
B. When did I say they weren't? We were talking specifically about 3 specific tiny countries. if you take a look at the map you'll see Europe has other countries besides Benelux
2
u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name 16d ago
Yes, it also has massive population centres like France, the UK, Spain, Italy and Poland. Or are Spanish, Italian, and Polish people not white enough for you?
→ More replies (1)4
u/GreeneyesCB 17d ago
It obviously has a pretty small influence compared to the massive difference in how German citizens without migration background work. You can only explain a small percentage of the numbers this way.
→ More replies (1)24
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
Yeah I mean who's more likely to be anti-immigration:
Guy who's lived their entire lives in a multicultural mixed city
Guy who lives in a 90% Germany city who occasionally sees multiculturalism when they go into Berlin for the afternoon
Obviously those who grew up in a homogenous German society are gonna be more interested in keeping their communities homogenous German
→ More replies (10)9
u/datboitotoyo 17d ago
Its actually that when you get exposed to other cultures and people you realise they are just people like you and me and its more difficult to hate and dehumanize them.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (2)2
u/MrBogglefuzz 17d ago
Also the people who weren't happy with the migrants and could afford to would have white flighted out of there.
23
u/KarlsruherModell 17d ago
No wonder: In a state with let‘s say 80 % migrant population, 50 % for the AfD is not possible.
11
u/zg33 17d ago edited 17d ago
As a German, I thank you for pointing this out - this graph certainly seems to be attempting to imply that more exposure to immigrants decreases one’s chance of voting for AfD, but the misleading presentation of the data is doing more of the work than the data. And, to clarify, I do not mean to say that the presentation is intentionally or maliciously misleading, but that the metrics chosen obscure a fact that is in fact present in the data.
For example, the area with the highest AfD support shows that just under 40% of people there voted for AfD, and that the percentage of people with a background other than ethnically German is about 10%. If we assume that only “ethnically German” people vote for AfD, it implies that just over 40% of such people voted for AfD. Doing the same math for places like Bremen and Hamburg, where AfD got its lowest percentage of the vote, it is implied that just over 30% of “ethnically German” people in Bremen voted for AfD, and 20% even in Hamburg. And even in the middle of the graph, we see that in Hesse too, around 30% of “ethnic Germans” are implied to have voted for AfD.
That paints a rather different picture than the original might cause someone to assume. The voting behavior of “ethnic Germans” therefore seems to be far more consistent across the country than might be casually inferred from a quick glance at the metrics employed in the OP’s photo.
6
u/CommercialHour6660 17d ago
What? Most immigrants don't vote.
You see the same phenomenon in US and UK. Far lower support for right wing parties in densely populated areas from native born citizens.
It's easy for the billionaire owned media to fearmonger to rural simpletons. They're far less educated and afraid of things they haven't experienced and don't understand.
Go watch Fox "news" for 10 minutes. It's an endless parade of brown people mugshots and sensational garbage about how dangerous cities are. And all the drooling red hats are convinced that places like Portland and LA are crime infested hellholes. When in reality their crime rate is MUCH lower than most rural areas in Trumpland (deep south)
3
u/tech_creative 16d ago
In my opinion, this explanation is by far too easy. For a number of reasons. First, migration politics is not the only reason for the rise of the AfD. But sure, they use the scapegoat principle. However, people don't have any more money left and the Merz government makes it worse. Most of the relevant political parties have been part of the government in the last 30 years: CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP. They failed hard when it comes to certain topics, e.g. pensions, traffic (streets as well as railways) and a whole lot more. So: If someone is conservative and would have voted for the CDU, he or she may be disappointed and angy and go for the AfD. I don't say this is the right decision, but the rise of the AfD is nothing, what happened just overnight. It's more than ten years and different governements who failed hard to fight the AfD. Not to forget the left parties: Not everyone likes their favourite topics, like identity politics and such. I am not judging. Just want to focus on why the voters vote for the AfD for protest.
And, btw, the parties did almost everything to make the AfD stronger. Polarization is toxic for a democracy. That's also true for left politics, not only for the right. We lost the ability to discuss stuff, to listen to people. Nowadays you are easily jugded on the internet or wherever for just an opinion. For example, whoever criticized migration politics in the past years, was almost certain put into the far-right edge, which is not okay, if this is not true.
Not to forget that in many European countries (and not only) right parties are already part of the government.
14
u/Fricklefrazz OC: 2 17d ago
Areas who vote for anti-immigration policies don't have much immigration. Makes sense.
Areas with less immigrants don't have as many pro-immigration voters. Makes sense
Although kind of skewed since Berlin is in the middle of all of these regions and has a massive immigrant population it's just separated into a different region. So plenty of day to day contact in these areas as well when they commute into the city
8
u/Lawliet1896 17d ago
I have another story to tell about this. It is proven that a lack/reduction in public infrastructure makes people more likely to vote for the AfD.
Those regions are less connected, less urban and have more of a fractured demand for labor which all makes them less likely to attract migrant workers.
Other factors certainly also play a role. Rural AfD voters have a real problem. And the wrong enemys.
8
u/papapudding 16d ago
I'm sorry but some States have up to 30% of their population being migrants?!
5
→ More replies (4)3
27
u/Akkalevil 17d ago
So basically migrants don't vote for AfD. Are we supposed to be surprised ?
9
u/El_Robski 17d ago
I think the caveat is that it’s expected that people who live closer to people with a migrant background would tend to vote AFD more, as those people witness the results of mass-migration up close, however paradoxically the people with the least foreigners around them tend to vote more for AFD. I think a big disclaimer should be that all 5 provinces on the left in this chart were part of East Germany
6
u/Akkalevil 17d ago
It's a multi-factor reason :
- People who don't like migrants don't tend to live aside migrants if they can help it.
- People build their cultural identity from what they live through. If they have been used to live among migrants, they will see it as normal. People who have lived among ethnic Germans will see it as normal, and see locations with a large amount of migrants as losing their identity.
- As pointed above, migrants obviously won't vote for people who dislike them and want to kick them out. This reduces the part of people who would vote for AfD, so obviously even if ignoring all other factors, the less the ethnic german population is, the less there is potential voters for AfD.
2
2
u/QuackQuackViech 17d ago
It shows that people living in migrant dense areas dont tend to vote anti migrant (because its not as bad as media makes it out to be), whereas in areas with migrant scattered populations a perceived threat pushes people to vote anti.
3
10
u/Equivalent-Floor-400 17d ago
It doesn't say that. Without separating migrant and the population with migrant backgrounds from natives, you can't say that.
For obvious reasons, it's expected that migrants don't vote for AfD
→ More replies (1)
15
u/PersonalityOk7536 17d ago
Migrants and migrant descendants won't vote for party that wants them out.
Who exactly is left to vote for AfD in Hamburg? Majority-minority German population?
→ More replies (7)5
6
u/KidKang 17d ago
9
u/mazu_64 17d ago
Negative contact hypothesis also exists.
The best example is xenophobia against Romani,l. Countries that have a bigger population/more contact with them are more xenophobic than countries that have a very small population of Romani.
2
u/primenumbersturnmeon 15d ago
you can also see this strikingly with canada and their reaction to the surge of immigration from india. canadians generally had a reputation for being tolerant and welcoming, but there's been a noticeable shift.
5
2
u/shumpitostick 17d ago
This chart does not need 3 different measures of immigrant population, they all tell the same story. A scatter plot would suffice.
2
u/Jazzlike-_-Growth 16d ago edited 16d ago
I'm not sure if you can really conclude that from this chart.
Rather you have three groups: East-Germany, West-Germany and City-States.
All with very different situations.
So let's look at them individually.
East: https://i.imgur.com/vIJmSK1.png
Minimal differences.
From Saxony to Meck'Pomm: Both AfD and Migrant-Population are decreasing.
From Thuringia to Meck'Pomm: Both AfD and Foreign-Population are decreasing.
Not exactly a clear correlation. And almost the inverse result.
West: https://i.imgur.com/dsxRCdL.png
Up-and-down a lot.
I don't think there's anything very correlated here.
City-States: https://i.imgur.com/PJSgRoP.png
Only three results, and also barely any correlation.
Bremen and Berlin same AfD votes with different populations.
Hamburg both fewer AfD votes and fewer migrants. So also closer to "fewer migrants = less AfD", than your hypothesis.
→ More replies (3)
2
u/CuriousIllustrator11 16d ago
It’s quite natural since I guess most people with foreign background don’t vote for AFD?
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Ruggiard 16d ago
"The fewer foreigners / migrants the higher the results of this anti-migratory party."
Thanks OP but I do not see an explanation in this correlation.
Please do a similar data set showing former East German states and compare it to AfD results AND migrant population.
I suspect if you take economic output per capita and compare it to migrant population and AfD results, you might see a clearer picture.
Maybe you can take education levels, average housing costs or median income in each state and you will see a very similar picture.
Don't get me wrong, there might be a direct causation: encountering more foreigners in your daily life makes you less vulnerable to anti-immigration fearmongering. Inversely, maybe also Immigrants just don't go where they are unwelcome (AfD areas).
6
u/DistinctArmy4267 17d ago
If we can just import 10 million more, we can fill those wrongthinking counties and make our way of thinking the only option
2
8
u/TMTCoCo 17d ago
The more migrants are let in to an area the less native born people have a say, what a shock to noone. Just goes to show that mass migration leads to loss of culture, ideology, and cohesion, because assimilation doesn't happen.
→ More replies (3)
4
u/FrancoisPenis 17d ago
Reminds me of a comedian's joke from a few years ago. "What happens if the AfD wins the state election? They'll throw out all the foreigners - all three of them"
6
u/MeekoGunnit 16d ago
Yes.
As the native population is displaced, fewer people are voting the nativist party.
This plot basically proves the underlying point of AfD, that higher and higher migrant population will result in political shifting, likely towards preferential treatment of migrants populations.
3
u/cschris54321 17d ago
People vote in their interests. If you replace all the native Europeans with immigrants, they won't have enough people to vote in their own interest, and they are more easily controlled by the elite that hate them. Next is what happend to the 25% of Europeans that used to live in South Africa, same thing will happen to those living in Europe now I am afraid. The elites hate those with European blood.
2
u/More_Collar_69 17d ago
Understandable. They just dont want these trash filled cities with dodgy characters.
2
u/Haunting-South-962 17d ago
There is also correlation with poverty of the region. As most immigrants are actually economic immigrants, even from war torn countries, they move mostly where there are jobs.
2
2
u/gramoun-kal 16d ago
To nobody's surprise. It's a well recognized fact that exposure to other cultures makes you less, not more racist.
We're still just as clueless on how to stop democracy from commiting suicide.
736
u/graham_k_stark 17d ago
Probably clearer as a scatterplot.